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Winter  2011 


Volume  II  Issue  1 7  i 


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Number  87 


Knight  Letter  is  the  official  magazine  of  the  Lewis  Carroll  Society  of  North  America. 

It  is  published  twice  a  year  and  is  distributed  free  to  all  members. 

Editorial  correspondence  should  be  sent  to 

the  Editor  in  Chief  at  mahendra373@hotmail.com. 

SUBMISSIONS 

Submissions  for  The  Rectory  Umbrella  and  Mischmasch  should  be  sent  to 

mahendra373@hotmail.com. 

Submissions  and  suggestions  for  Serendipidity  and  Sic  Sic  Sic  should  be  sent  to 

andrewogus@mindspring.com. 

Submissions  and  suggestions  for  All  Must  Have  Prizes  should  be  sent  to 

joel@thebirenbaums.net. 

Submissions  and  suggestions  for  From  Our  Far-Flung  Correspondents  should  be  sent  to 

FarFlungKnight@gmail.com. 

©  2011  The  Lewis  Carroll  Society  of  North  America 
ISSN  0193-886X 


Mahendra  Singh,  Editor  in  Chief 

Ann  Buki,  Editor,  Carrollian  Notes 

Cindy  Watter,  Editor,  Of  Books  and  Things 

James  Welsch  &  Rachel  Eley,  Editors,  From  Our  Far-Flung  Correspondents 

Mark  Burstein,  Production  Editor 

Andrew  H.  Ogus,  Designer 

THE  LEWIS  CARROLL  SOCIETY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA 

President: 
Mark  Burstein,  president@lewiscarroll.org 

Vice-President: 
Cindy  Watter,  hedgehogccw@sbcglobal.net 

Secretary: 
Clare  Imholtz,  secretary@lewiscarroll.org 

www.LewisCarroll.org 

Annual  membership  dues  are  U.S.  $35  (regular), 

$50  (international),  and  $100  (sustaining). 

Subscriptions,  correspondence,  and  inquiries  should  be  addressed  to: 

Clare  Imholtz,  LCSNA  Secretary 

11935  Beltsville  Dr. 

Beltsville,  Maryland  20705 

Additional  contributors  to  this  issue: 
Clare  Imholtz,  Fernly  Bowers,  Yoshiyuki  Momma 

On  the  cover:  The  suppression  of  a  guinea  pig,  from  Alice  au  Pays  des  Merveilles, 
illustrated  by  Rebecca  Dautremer.  See  review  on  p.  51. 


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THe   R6CTORY   UMBRSLLA 
« 

Occupy  Wonderland! 

CLARE  IMHOLTZ 

A  Perfect  and  Absolute  Mystery 

DOUG  HOWICK 

Through  a  Carrollian  Lens:  Emily  Aguilo-Perez 
The  Curious  Door:  Charles  Dodgson  isf  the  If/ley  Yew 

ALISON  GOPNIK  6fALVY  RAY  SMITH 

The  Hunting  of  Alice  in  Seven  Fits 

ADRIANA  PELIANO 


MISCHMASCH 


Hth 


All  Must  Have  Prizes 

JOEL  BIRNBAUM 

CARROLLIAN    NOT6S 


Beaver  Problems:  Snark  Arithmetic 
&  Truculent  Allusion 

AUGUSTA.  IMHOLTZ, JR. 

Little  Alice  in  America 

CLARE  IMHOLTZ 

Lewis  Carroll:  Man  of  Science 

FRAN  ABELES 


14 
25 


Leaves  from  the  Deanery  Garden —  Serendipity — Ravings       33 
On  the  Discovery  of  an  English  "Jabbenvocky"  36 

ALAN  LEVINOVITZ 


38 


40 
41 

43 


OF   BOOKS   AND  THINGS 

* 


Simon  Says 
MARK  BURSTEIN 

The  Love-Ins 
MARK  BURSTEIN 

Beware  of  Greeks  Bearing  Snarks  ? 

DOUG  HOWICK 

Snarked!  0,  1,  and  2 

ANDREW  OGUS 

Alice's  Adventvires  in  NYC  Wonderland — 
the  Text  Generation 

CINDY  WAITER 

The  Logic  Pamphlets  of  Lewis  Carroll 

SEN  WONG 


44 


44 


44 


45 


45 


46 


Forgotten  the  English?  Alice  aux  pays  des  mervielles   51 

ANDREW  OGUS 


52 


The  Pre-Raphaelite  Lens:  British  Photography 
&  Painting  1848 -1875 

CLARE  IMHOLTZ 

FROM    OUR    FAR-FLUNG 

CORR6SPONDGNTS 

& 

Art  Of  Illustration — Articles  &  Academia — 

Books — Events,  Exhibits,  &  Places — Internet  &  Technology — 

Movies  6f  Television — Music — Performing  Arts — Things       53 


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rhis  issue  of  the  Knight  Letter  talks  of  many 
things  whose  time  has  come,  ranging  from 
Adriana  Peliano's  surrealist-inflected  tour 
of  the  Alician  multiverse  to  Doug  Howick's  filling-in 
of  the  infamous  blank  spots  in  the  Bellman's  map. 
Alison  Gopnik  and  Alvy  Ray  Smith  have  uprooted  the 
obscure  Carrollian  role  of  Oxford's  Iffley  Yew,  and 
just  in  time  to  furnish  food  and  shelter  for  August 
Imholtz's  mathematically  challenged,  tree-climbing 
Beaver.  More  logically  minded  readers  can  mull  over 
Sen  Wong's  wide-ranging  review  of  the  latest  install- 
ment in  the  LCSNA/University  of  Virginia's  ongo- 
ing publication  of  Carroll's  pamphlets,  while  more 
poetically-minded  Carrollians  can  enjoy  a  well-earned 
giggle  over  Alan  Levinovitz's  Wittgenstein-influenced 
back-translation  of  "Jabberwocky." 

We  also  have  for  you  Clare  Imholtz's  explanation 
of  the  Anglo-American  Little  Alice  confusion,  a  bit 
of  bibliographic  sleuthing  that  also  serves  to  air  out 
Carroll's  disdain  for  Americans.  Then  there's  Cindy 
Watter's  brave  review  of  an  uber-hip  text-message-ese 
version  of  Wonderland,  a  review  that  may  well  deliver 
the  coup  de  grace  to  our  more  hyperdigitized  Carrol- 
lians. The  latter  may  wish  to  throw  their  Kindles  on  a 
bonfire  of  vanities  and  return,  chastened,  to  the  sim- 


pler pages  of  the  several  other,  more  orthodox  paper 
and  ink  Carrollian-themed  publications  reviewed  in 
this  issue. 

Our  ongoing  series  of  member  profiles,  "Through 
a  Carrollian  Lens,"  continues  with  a  contribution  from 
Emily  Aguilo-Perez,  and  we  hope  that  other  members 
will  also  pluck  up  the  courage  to  send  in  their  own 
stories  of  Carrollian  peregrinations.  One  peregrina- 
tion in  particular  is  taking  on  global  proportions:  the 
Alicel50  project.  Jon  Lindseth  and  Joel  Birenbaum 
are  leading  this  complex  multinational  effort,  and  any 
members  who  wish  to  assist  them  would  be  very  wel- 
come. Further  details  can  be  found  in  Joel's  current 
installment  of  All  Must  Have  Prizes,  which  also  tackles 
Madison  Avenue's  tacky  love  affair  with  Alice  and  her 
irresistible  branding  allure. 

Our  more  alert  readers  will  have  noticed  by  now 
that  the  dominant  theme  of  this  issue  is  the  strenu- 
ous avoidance  of  any  dominant  theme.  This  is  no 
accident.  Everything  has  a  theme  if  only  you  can  find 
it,  and  what  better  way  to  keep  it  safely  hidden  from 
chronic,  sharp-chinned  moralizers  than  by  putting 
it  into  the  nonsensical  service  of  this  issue  of  the 
Knight  Letter} 

MAHENDRA  SINGH 


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OCCUPY  WONDERLAND! 


CLARE  IMHOLTZ 


Mgain  hosted  by  former  LCSNA  president 
Edward  Guiliano,  now  president  of  the  New 
York  Institute  of  Technology,  again  the  LC- 
SNA enjoyed  a  fabulous  meeting  on  a  scintillating  fall 
day  in  New  York  City.  We  began  with  brief  talks  by  Joel 
Birenbaum  and  Jon  Lindseth,  who  are  leading  our 
efforts  to  organize  "Alicel50:  Celebrating  Wonder- 
land," which  will  mark  the  150th  anniversary  of  the 
original  publication  of  Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland 
in  1865.  Potentially  the  most  ambitious  Alice  event 
ever  held,  Alice  150,  which  focuses  on  Alice  in  the 
popular  culture  and  not  the  dusky  groves  of  academe, 
will  include  multiple  exhibitions  in  New  York — at  the 
Grolier  Club,  the  Morgan  Library,  NYIT,  the  New 
York  Public  Library,  Columbia  University,  New  York 
University,  the  Museum  of  Comic  and  Cartoon  Art, 
and  Sotheby's — as  well  as  satellite  events  across  the 
country.  More  venues  are  being  sought. 

It  all  happens  in  October  2015.  Alice  150  will  also 
include  themed  windows  at  Bergdorf  s,  a  gala  dinner, 
and  a  multivolume  book  on  translations — to  include, 
for  some  112  languages,  essays  and  back-translations 
of  the  majority  of  pun-filled  Chapter  7  ("A  Mad  Tea- 
Party"),  said  to  be  the  most  difficult  to  translate.  A 
back-translation  means  that  the  foreign-language  ver- 
sion is  translated  back  into  English,  as  literally  as  pos- 
sible, to  reveal  how  true  (or,  in  many  cases,  untrue)  it 
is  to  Carroll's  original. 


The  organizers  need  your  help,  particularly  with 
planning  events  for  children  and  youths,  and  particu- 
larly from  people  located  in  the  New  York  area.  Vol- 
unteers should  please  contact  Joel  Birenbaum  (joel@ 
thebirenbaums.net)  for  particulars. 

Our  first  speaker,  Adriana  Peliano,  is  an  artist, 
writer,  translator,  and  founder  of  the  Sociedade  Lewis 
Carroll  do  Brasil.  Adriana,  who  is  already  known  to 
most  of  us  through  her  recent  writings  in  this  journal, 
was  garbed  appropriately  in  a  pink,  red,  and  black 
dress  of  her  own  devising,  with  an  image  of  Alice 
(printed  on  a  tea  towel) ,  a  black  net  overlay  for  a  pin- 
afore, and  a  detachable  neck  ruffle. 

Adriana's  theme  was  transformations  wrought  by 
Alice — "Alice  and  I  constantly  recreate  each  other," 
she  began.  We  transform  ourselves  each  time  we  read 
Alice,  and  our  readings  transform  Alice,  again  and 
again.  Accompanied  by  her  husband,  Paulo  Beto,  on 
the  synthesizer,  and  by  her  own  Alice  art  and  other 
videos  constantly  shifting  on  the  screen  behind  her, 
Adriana  presented  a  brilliant  talk,  adorned  with  wit, 
(e.g.,  "What  is  the  use  of  a  book  ivith  pictures  and  con- 
versations?" she  queried),  which  you  may  read  on  p. 
25.  Adriana  distributed  a  wonderful  keepsake,  Fringe 
Alice,  actually  a  magical  "oracle"  which,  if  you  bring  it 
to  life  (instructions  are  included),  "will  listen  to  your 
dreams." 


As  Adriana  suggested,  the  only  fixed  and  immuta- 
ble thing  about  Alice  is  change:  change  as  an  unend- 
ing kaleidoscopic  possibility-filled  dialogue  between 
Alice  and  her  readers.  Change  was  a  theme  to  be  car- 
ried forward  by  many  of  our  speakers. 

Next  up  was  James  Fotopoulos,  an  experimental 
filmmaker,  whose  most  recent  piece,  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land, is  a  98-minute  video  adaptation  of  Henry  Savile 
Clark's  1886  staged  Alice  in  Wonderland:  A  Dream  Play 
for  Children.  James  started  making  this  film  after  see- 
ing an  exhibit  of  Carroll's  photographs;  he  was  par- 
ticularly struck  by  a  photograph  of  Marion  Terry  in 
which  Carroll  deliberately  let  the  brick  wall  behind 
the  backdrop  show.  This  rejection  of  artifice — like 
Charlie  Chaplin's  letting  the  makeup  on  his  face 
show  in  the  film  The  Circus — seemed  to  James  to  offer 
a  direct  route  to  the  past,  and  a  hook  by  which  to  con- 
nect yesterday's  media  and  technologies  to  today's, 
and  amateur  artists  to  professionals.  He  performed 
surgery,  he  stated,  to  "restore"  Carroll's  photographs 
to  contemporary  relevance  by  abstracting  245  draw- 
ings, done  in  coral  and  gray,  from  them.  On  these 
images,  he  superimposed  Walter  Slaughter's  music 
from  the  Savile  Clark  play,  similarly  deconstructed,  to 
provide  a  narrative  for  his  film — a  spine,  as  he  said, 
along  which  he  brought  together  personal  referents, 
including  his  responses  to  the  work  of  John  Ruskin, 
Thomas  Eakins,  and  other  nineteenth-  and  early 
twentieth-century  artists.  And  Alice  in  Wonderland,  the 
book?  The  book — its  tide,  actually,  as  he  has  admit- 
tedly never  read  the  book — was  only  a  "vehicle"  from 
which  to  jump  into  film.  Fotopoulos  said  that  it  takes 
him  years  to  make  films,  and  then  he  doesn't  under- 


Mary  Ann  (later  "Marion")  Terry  (1853-1930) 
in  chain  armor,  July  1875. 


Adriana  Peliano 


stand  what  he  has  done  for  years  afterward.  Perhaps 
that  explains  why  the  clips  he  showed  (regrettably  fol- 
lowing rather  than  preceding  his  ruminations)  were 
so  difficult  for  the  audience  to  understand  (at  least 
for  now).  The  film  is  definitely  a  changed  "Alice." 

We  took  a  short  break  here,  enabling  attendees 
to  purchase  various  Carrollian  wares,  including  a 
"facsimile"  of  Alices  Adventures  under  Ground  in  Car- 
roll's "handwriting,"  but  translated  into  Portuguese 
by  Adriana,  and  a  few  examples  of  the  ongoing  se- 
ries of  Alice  translations  published  by  Evertype,  the 
publishing  company  run  by  LCSNA  member  Michael 
Everson.  In  fact,  earlier,  during  the  announcement 
period,  Everson  had  engagingly  read  a  selection  from 
the  Scots  translation  he  recently  published — Ailice's 
Aventurs  in  Wunnerland. 

LCSNA  member  Emily  Aguilo-Perez's  talk,  en- 
titled "Good  Alice,  Naughty  Alice,"  based  on  her  Mas- 
ter's in  English  Education  thesis  at  the  University  of 
Puerto  Rico,  gave  more  examples  of  how  Alice  chang- 
es. Why,  Emily  asked,  do  recent  adaptations  such  as 
the  Burton  and  SyFy  films  make  Alice  a  teenager  or 
young  adult,  rather  than  the  little  girl  she  was,  and, 
perhaps  more  puzzling,  why  is  this  new,  older  Alice 
frequently  presented  with  marriage  proposals?  Em- 
ily suggests  that  these  phenomena  are  a  response  to 
the  unfortunately  widespread  contemporary  percep- 
tion of  Carroll  as  a  pedophile,  and  she  gave  several 
examples  of  images  on  the  Internet  illustrating  this 
perception,  citing  "Internet  rule  34,"  which  states  that 
anything  that  exists  can  be  made  sexual  ("There  is 
porn  of  it.").  An  older  Alice  not  only  appeals  more 
to  an  adult  audience,  but  can  be  eroticized  without 


Mark  Burstein  and  Emily  Aguilo-Perez 


having  the  issue  arise.  Of  course,  many  recent  Alice 
adaptations  are  very  sexualized — far  more  so  than  the 
Burton  or  SyFy  versions — and  sometimes  even  porno- 
graphic; American  McGee's  Alice  and  Lost  Girls  come  im- 
mediately to  mind,  and  even  Dreamchild,  years  back, 
alluded  to  Carroll's  supposed  predilection. 

Suitors  and  proposals  appear  in  both  the  Burton 
and  SyFy  productions,  and  also,  I  can  note,  in  the 
play  Alice  by  Mary  Hall  Surface,  which  premiered  in 
2008.  What's  with  these  suitors?  I  wondered  at  the 
time.  Emily  suggests  that  the  suitors,  present  only  to 
be  rejected  by  Alice,  represent  our  cultural  rejection 
of  the  uncomfortable  notion  that  Alice  Liddell  might 
have  married  Charles  Dodgson.  Alice  has  changed, 
Emily  noted,  as  our  image  of  childhood  has  changed, 
increasing  our  anxiety  about  violations  of  childhood 
innocence. 

LCSNA  founding  member  and  renowned  Carroll 
scholar  Prof.  Morton  Cohen,  up  next,  promised  "no 
visuals,  only  words."  Morton  spoke  about  Carroll's 
creativity  in  a  talk  called  "Lewis  Carroll's  Epiphanies," 
refining  ideas  he  had  first  presented  at  LCSNA's  1997 
meeting  in  Collegeville,  Minnesota.  We  are  all  imita- 
tors, said  Morton;  only  a  few  of  us  are  creators.  There 
are  two  types  of  creators:  visionaries,  whose  imagina- 
tions spin  continuously;  and  mortals,  like  Carroll, 
who  experience  inspired  visions  once  or  twice  in  their 
lifetimes.  The  latter  type  Morton  contrasted  with  An- 
thony Trollope,  who  was  successful  and  disciplined, 
but  not  inspired.  Carroll  too  was  disciplined,  but  un- 
like Trollope,  twice  in  his  life  was  visited  by  the  divine 
spark  of  inspiration — when  writing  Alice's  Adventures 
in  Wonderland  and  again  when  writing  The  Hunting  of 


the  Snark.  Both  sparks  arose  out  of  life  events.  Wonder- 
land's creative  surge,  Morton  stated,  was  due  to  Car- 
roll's enchantment  with  Alice  Liddell. 

Frequently  in  the  six  years  before  Wonderland  was 
written,  Carroll  marked  his  diary  with  a  white  stone — 
a  symbol,  for  Carroll,  of  the  intensity  of  his  feelings — 
and  each  white  stone  day  was  connected  with  either 
Alice  Liddell  or  photography.  Twelve  years  later,  an- 
other intensely  emotional  event — the  mortal  illness 
of  his  cousin  Charlie  Wilcox — precipitated  Carroll's 
inspired  writing  of  the  Snark.  Only  on  these  two  oc- 
casions was  Carroll  to  reach  such  heights.  Morton 
stressed  that  such  flashes — epiphanies,  as  he  termed 
them — were  not  the  product  of  Carroll's  own  self,  but 
were  mysteries  prompted  by  earthly  events.  Looking- 
Glass,  while  remarkable,  was  the  product  of  Carroll's 
rational  disciplined  mind,  and  not  inspiration. 

Our  next  speaker  was  Alison  Gopnik,  a  profes- 
sor of  psychology  and  philosophy  at  the  University  of 
California,  Berkeley,  an  expert  on  child  development, 
author  of  the  best-selling  The  Philosophical  Baby,  and 
sister  of  writer  Adam  Gopnik  (who  has  himself  twice 
addressed  our  Society).  Alison  stated  that  this  oppor- 
tunity to  address  the  LCSNA  was  the  culmination  of 
an  obsession  she'd  had  since  she  was  two  years  old  and 
first  encountered  Alice.  Her  engaging  talk  bore  a  tide 
worthy  of  Conan  Doyle  or  John  Dickson  Carr:  "The 
Curious  Door:  Charles  Dodgson  and  the  Iffley  Yew." 

While  recently  on  sabbatical  in  Oxford,  Alison 
and  her  husband,  Alvy  Ray  Smith  (who  is  not  only  the 
co-author  of  Alison's  talk,  but  an  expert  genealogical 
researcher  and  a  co-founder  of  Pixar) ,  began  a  nifty 
and  thorough  piece  of  detection  when  they  visited 
nearby  Iffley  and  saw,  standing  in  the  yard  of  the  lo- 
cal twelfth-century  Romanesque  church,  a  large,  old 
(and  as  it  turned  out,  very  famous)  yew  tree  with  a 
stone-filled  opening  about  four  feet  by  four  feet  at  its 
base.  Alison  immediately  realized  how  such  a  large 
hollow  entrance  into  a  tree  would  captivate  children's 


PHI 

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Alison  Gopnik  and  Morton  Cohen 


vivid  imaginations  and  irresistibly  summon  them  in, 
just  as  Alice  entered  the  doorway  in  a  tree  in  Under 
Ground.  She  set  out  to  see  if  the  tree  that  Carroll  drew 
on  p.  67  wasn't  in  fact  the  Iffley  yew.  As  Alison's  talk, 
with  all  its  fascinating  and  well-documented  detec- 
tion, is  reprinted  on  p.  17,  we  will  not  rehearse  her 
arguments  here. 

Alison  concluded  her  talk  with  a  few  trenchant 
observations  from  her  research  on  children's  imagi- 
nations. When  children  imagine  alternate  worlds, 
they  are  essentially  creating  intuitive  theories;  they 
are  generating  counterfactuals  in  order  to  under- 
stand their  world,  just  as  adult  scientists  do.  Child- 
hood, which  lasts  longer  in  human  beings  than  in 
any  other  species,  is  the  time  in  which  we  do  our  per- 
sonal R&D  (research  and  development);  adulthood 
is  for  production  and  marketing.  Carroll  saw  the  links 
between  children's  wide-ranging  imaginations  and 
adult  logic  and  empiricism.  He  knew  that  any  child 
would  recognize  that  huge  hole  in  the  Iffley  yew  as 
a  doorway  to  another  world.  Years  ago,  Alison  wrote, 
"At  twenty  Alice  changed  my  life."  It  appears  Alice  is 
still  doing  that — and  not  only  for  Alison. 

Jeff  Menges,  a  fantasy  artist  and  illustrator,  was 
our  final  speaker.  Jeff  is  the  editor  of  Dover's  forth- 
coming Alice  Illustrated,  a  collection  of  125  Alice  illus- 
trations, which  includes  notes  by  Jeff  and  an  intro- 
duction by  LCSNA  president  Mark  Burstein.  Most  of 


the  illustrations  in  the  book  will  be  by  Golden  Age 
illustrators,  those  from  the  1880s  to  the  1920s,  a  pe- 
riod that  just  happens  to  be  Jeff  s  specialty.  Jeff  stated 
that  it  has  been  fun  to  collect  the  illustrations,  and 
he  appreciated  Mark's  help  with  that.  He  noted  that 
there  are  three  scenes  that  evidently  must,  de  rigueur, 
be  included  in  every  Wonderland:  the  caterpillar,  the 
tea-party,  and  the  flying  playing  cards. 

Jeff  showed  sample  illustrations  from  the  Wonder- 
lands of  about  fifteen  or  twenty  artists,  with  succinct 
comments  on  each  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  graph- 
ic artist.  He  mentioned,  for  example,  Rackham's  sub- 
tle tonal  quality,  the  surreal  visage  of  Peter  Newell 's 
caterpillar,  Millicent  Sowerby's  overuse  of  profiled 
faces,  the  resemblance  between  Mabel  Attwell's  char- 
acters and  the  "Campbell  Kids,"  the  exquisite  compo- 
sition of  Charles  Folkard's  dancing  spoons,  and  so  on 
through  Gwynedd  Hudson,  Milo  Winter,  Harry  Roun- 
tree,  and  many  more,  culminating  in  Barry  Moser. 
Moser,  who  is  the  only  post-Tenniel  artist  in  the  book 
not  of  the  Golden  Age,  is  included  because  of  Jeffs 
admiration  for  his  work  and  because  of  Barry's  gener- 
osity in  allowing  Dover  to  print  his  images.  Jeffs  talk 
was  a  delightful  survey  of  art  from  one  of  our  favorite 
books,  and  a  most  enjoyable  way  to  close  our  formal 
meeting.  From  NYIT,  we  went  a  few  blocks  north  on 
Broadway  to  Cafe  Fiorello,  where  we  enjoyed  a  deli- 
cious dinner  and  scintillating  conversation. 


HEART  OF  THE  CITY 


MARK  TATULU 


^ 


•^^r 


*?► 


A  PERFECT  AND  ABSOLUTE  MYSTERY 


DOUG  HOWICK 


^ 


^ 


^*V 


Ml  though  I  have  sailed  on  most  of  the  oceans 
on  this  planet,  I  have  no  particular  interest 
in  ocean  charts  other  than  an  interest  in 
the  Bellman's  blank  one  in  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark. 
However,  in  2007  the  well-known  illustrator  and  ani- 
mator Michael  Sporn  opened  a  discussion  on  his 
"splog"  comparing  the  depiction  of  the  Bellman's 
map  in  his  own  film  of  the  Snark  (1989)  with  those 
of  several  other  illustrators — namely  Barry  Smith 
(1995),  Mahendra  Singh  (2007),  Quentin  Blake 
(1976),  and  Ralph  Steadman  (1975).  This  prompted 
responses  from  several  people,  including  Mahendra 
Singh,  the  current  editor  of  the  KL,  and  myself.  Mi- 
chael explained  that  he'd  had  trouble  finding  fur- 
ther illustrations,  as  most  of  his  books  were  then  in 
storage,  and  he  invited  me  to  contribute  any  other 
Snarky  maps  I'd  like  him  to  show. 

As  my  predominant  interest  in  the  Snark  has  been 
comparing  the  interpretations  of  a  wide  range  of  il- 
lustrators (see  KL  82,  "The  Hunting  of  the  Butcher"), 
I  sent  Michael  several  straightaway,  some  of  which  he 
showed  in  a  further  post  extending  the  discussion  a 
week  or  so  later.  In  that  post,  he  showed  the  maps  cre- 
ated by  Frank  Hinder  (1989),  Harold  Jones  (1975), 
Michael  Capozzola  (2005),  Kelly  Oechsli  (1966), 
John  Lord  (2006),  Max  Ernst  (1950), Jonathan  Dixon 
(1992),  and  Helen  Oxenbury  (1970). 

As  Michael  had  not  used  all  of  my  offerings  at 
the  time,  Mahendra  suggested  that  I  should  write  a 
paper  about  "the  blank  chart."  It's  been  very  much 
an  "on  again,  off  again"  production,  but  finally,  this  is 
it — and  I  have  more  offerings  than  I  realized. 

In  searching  the  World  Wide  Web  for  further  in- 
formation (or  inspiration),  I  discovered  another  blog 
quite  unrelated  to  Carroll  or  the  Snark  and  entitled 
"Underdog  of  Perfection"  (http://blog.room34. 
com/archives/410),  in  which  the  author  disclosed 
that  he  was  afraid  of  blank  spaces  on  maps.  He  added 
that  the  promising  term  "cartophobia"  turned  out  to 
refer  to  the  much  more  mundane  (and  much  more 
understandable,  I  suppose)  "fear"  of  maps  in  the 
sense  of  being  intimidated  by  maps  and  not  under- 
standing how  to  read  them.  His  problem  was  precisely 
the  opposite:  He  loved  maps  and  could  study  their 
minutiae  in  detail  for  hours.  And  he  thought  that 


must  be  exactly  why  "voids"  on  the  maps  freaked  him 
out  so  much  ...  it's  like  stepping  into  nonexistence. 

There  we  go  again!  How  often  do  we  hear  the 
concept  of  nothingness  linked  to  Carroll?  In  the  Dis- 
ney movie,  Alice  says,  "If  I  had  a  world  of  my  own,  ev- 
erything would  be  nonsense.  Nothingvroxild  be  what  it 
is,  because  everything  would  be  what  it  isn't.  And  con- 
trariwise, what  is,  it  wouldn't  be.  And  what  it  wouldn't 
be,  it  would.  You  see?" 

In  1982,  Stefan  Kanfer  of  Time  magazine  dis- 
cussed the  publication  of  the  Centennial  Edition  of 
Martin  Gardner's  Annotated  Snark  by  Kaufmann,  and, 
drawing  heavily  on  Gardner's  Preface,  commented: 
"The  Snark  is  a  poem  about  being  and  nonbeing,  an 
existential  poem,  a  poem  of  existential  agony.  The 
Bellman's  map  is  the  map  that  charts  the  course  of 
humanity;  blank  because  we  possess  no  information 
about  where  we  are  or  whither  we  drift.  The  Snark  is, 
in  Paul  Tillich's  fashionable  phrase,  every  man's  ulti- 
mate concern.  This  is  the  great  search  motif  of  the 
poem,  the  quest  for  an  ultimate  good.  But  this  motif 
is  submerged  in  a  stronger  motif,  the  dread,  the  ago- 
nizing dread,  of  ultimate  failure.  The  Boojum  is  more 
than  death.  It  is  the  end  of  all  searching.  It  is  final, 
absolute  extinction,  in  Auden's  phrase,  'the  dreadful 
Boojum  of  Nothingness.'" 

The  blank  ocean  chart  echoes  Alice's  dialog  with 
the  Cheshire  Cat,  in  which  we  learn  that  it  doesn't 
matter  which  way  you  go  if  you  don't  much  care 
where  you're  going. 

The  chart  is  a  concept  to  stir  the  imagination. 
Why  else  would  Carroll  have  produced  a  picture  of 
nothing? 

WHO   PRODUCED   THE   FIRST   OCEAN   CHART? 

Astonishingly,  there  is  scant  information  to  give  a  de- 
finitive answer  to  such  a  basic  question.  Furthermore, 
there  are  many  references  that  state  quite  categorical- 
ly that  the  illustrator  was  Henry  Holiday.  This  I  doubt. 
In  my  opinion,  the  most  authoritative  references 
regarding  Henry  Holiday's  Snark  illustrations  are  "De- 
signs for  the  Snark"  by  Charles  Mitchell  (1982)  and 
the  writings  of  Henry  Holiday  himself,  such  as  "The 
Snark's  Significance"  (1898)  and  "Reminiscences  of 
My  Life"  (1914). 


LATITUDE 


Scale  of  Miles. 


OCEANC  HART. 


f          ■ ' 

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s*"'t                                 CumptHs-Pnints.  N,  E.  S,  M 

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Figure  1.  The  original  Ocean 


Figure  2.  A  frequently  cited  Ocean  Chart 


Mitchell  surveys  and  catalogues:  "(a)  Henry  Holi- 
day's known  drawings  for  the  Snark,  (b)  the  known 
proofs  of  Joseph  Swain's  cuts  (of  the  blocks)  and  (c) 
the  surviving  wood  blocks  of  the  nine  illustrations." 
He  meticulously  traces  and  verifies  all  of  these  and, 
regardless  of  the  chronology  of  their  creation  or  adap- 
tion; it  suffices  that  I  summarize  here  those  drawings 
by  Holiday  that  progressed  to  become  woodblocks 
faithfully  cut  by  Swain  and  that  survived  finally  to  be- 
come illustrations  in  the  first  edition  of  the  Snark: 


Frontispiece 
Fit  the  First 


The  Landing 

The  Crew  on  Board,  the 
Butcher  and  the  Beaver 


Fit  the  Third        The  Baker's  Tale 
Fit  the  Fourth      The  Hunting 


Fit  the  Fifth 
Fit  the  Sixth 


The  Beaver's  Lesson 
The  Barrister's  Dream 


Fit  the  Seventh    The  Banker's  Fate 

Fit  the  Eighth      The  Vanishing 

These  are  the  "nine  illustrations  by  Henry  Holi- 
day" so  frequently  reproduced  and  mentioned  in  ref- 
erences. For  all  the  published  detail  about  the  origins 
and  development  of  the  nine  illustrations,  there  is 
surprisingly  little  detail  about  the  front  cover  illustra- 
tion, although  Holiday  records  that  the  illustration 
for  the  back  cover  originated  from  a  sketch  he  had 
made  of  a  bell-buoy  at  Lands  End.  However,  add  the 
illustrations  of  the  front  and  back  cover  to  the  other 


nine,  and  we  have  eleven — and  no  mention  anywhere 
of  the  Ocean  Chart! 

I  am  convinced  that  it  was  indeed  Carroll  who 
produced  it!  There  is  absolutely  no  evidence  that  it 
was  produced  by  Holiday — so  who  else?  It  is  Carroll's 
Ocean  Chart! 

QUOTES   AND   MISQUOTES 

The  fascinating  thing  about  my  investigations  into  the 
Bellman's  map  is  that  there  are  so  many  references  to 
it  by  people  with  no  particular  interest  in  either  Carroll 
or  the  Snark.  Many  of  these  are  by  cartographers,  ge- 
ographers, mathematicians  and  a  whole  lot  of  others. 
Maybe  this  is  the  reason  for  so  many  inconsistencies  . 

For  example,  one  of  the  most  frequently  cited  il- 
lustrations attributed  to  Henry  Holiday  is  as  shown  in 
Figure  2  beside  the  original  in  Figure  1.  Now  I  sim- 
ply do  not  know  where  the  version  in  Figure  2  came 
from,  but  it  gets  a  lot  of  reproduction  on  the  Web. 
Maybe  some  of  our  readers  can  enlighten  me.  Not 
only  is  it  not  by  Holiday  (see  above),  there  are  several 
ways  in  which  this  illustration  differs  from  that  of  the 
original  edition,  notably: 

Inclusion  of  "SOUTH"  at  base 
Inclusion  of  "Compass-Points,  N,  E,  S,  W." 
Exclusion  of  "OCEAN-CHART" 
Exclusion  of  "of  Miles"  after  "Scale" 
Different  sequence  of  dots  on  scale 


The 

Atlas 


j,7^7J77T7-,ji<R.i|.  W  ■j.T.fr.wfr4^fr-fr*TTj[ 


75  Uncharted  Territories 
for  OfT'the-Beaten-PathfindeTS 


Figure  3  .  The  Carte  Blanche  Atlas 


The  sequence  of  dots  on  the  scale  has  always  in- 
trigued me.  The  original  has  a  "22132"  arrangement, 
but  I  have  been  unable  to  make  anything  of  that.  I've 
also  wondered  whether  it  was  a  message  in  Morse 
code,  which  had  been  invented  by  Samuel  Morse  in 
1844.  If  so,  it  would  spell  "IIESI,"  which  doesn't  make 
any  sense  to  me  either.  Again,  maybe  some  of  our 
readers  can  enlighten  us. 

A  common  textual  misquote  is  "He  had  brought 
a  large  map  ..."  The  Bellman  didn't  bring  a  large  map 
representing  the  sea,  he  bought  one.  At  least,  that  is 
what  the  crew  were  given  to  understand.  Really?  Are 
we,  the  readers,  as  gullible  as  the  crew  members?  Are 
we  to  believe  that,  previous  to  the  voyage,  the  Bell- 
man had  spent  his  own  money  to  buy  a  large  map 
representing  the  sea? 

As  the  map  had  "not  the  least  vestige  of  land," 
it  really  was  of  no  consequence  which  sea  was  rep- 
resented on  the  map.  Thus,  we  must  look  for  other 
clues  or  instructions  as  to  how  the  crew  should  locate 
the  Snark. 

Maybe  a  clue  had  already  been  foreshadowed  in 
Carroll's  Preface,  in  which  he  explains  that  although 
he  might  do  so,  he  will  not  point  "to  the  strong  ar- 
ithmetical principles  so  cautiously  inculcated"  in  the 
poem  itself.  He  goes  on  to  explain  Rule  42  of  the  Na- 
val Code  under  which  "No  one  shall  speak  to  the  Man 
at  the  Helm."  And  the  acronym  for  Man  at  the  Helm 
is — MATH.  How's  that  for  cautious  inculcation? 


L  A  T  I T  V  P  E                                      N  O  R  T II                                        K  g  U  A  T  O  B 

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Ocean  Chart  with  Ship's  Tracts 

Figure  4.  Ocean  Chart  with  ship 's  track 


THE   BELLMAN 

Very  few  Carrollian  scholars  seem  to  have  analyzed 
the  Bellman  in  any  great  depth.  However,  John  Tu- 
fail  (2003)  suggested  that  there  might  have  been  two 
Bellmen,  the  one  a  navigator,  supremely  confident  in 
his  ability  to  successfully  guide  his  ship  and  his  crew, 
and  the  other  an  imposter  whose  main  credentials 
seem  to  be  his  ability  to  impose  his  authority  on  a  mis- 
guided crew.  While  not  in  favor  of  the  two-Bellmen 
theory,  I  suggest  that  there  are  sufficient  behavioral 
contradictions  to  indicate  that — in  common  with  oth- 
er more  famous  nautical  and  military  leaders,  such  as 
Admiral  Lord  Nelson  and  Napoleon  Bonaparte — the 
Bellman's  mood  swings  may  have  been  attributable  to 
bipolar  disorder. 

So  if  he  bought  the  map  rather  than  brought  it, 
maybe  he  didn't  bring  it  at  all.  There  is  no  indica- 
tion that  he  actually  gave  it  or  showed  it  to  the  crew — 
he  merely  talked  to  them  about  it.  The  crew  found 
that  they  could  understand  the  concept  of  a  blank 
map  because  they  really  had  no  idea  of  where  they 
were  going  or  whether  they  were  on  the  right  course. 
Other  maps  with  "conventional  signs"  that  are  "such 
shapes,  with  their  islands  and  capes"  would  have  dem- 
onstrated the  fact  that  they  were  lost,  as  a  result  of 
their  own  incompetence,  and  the  fact  that  their  brave 


Captain  "had  only  one  notion  for  crossing  the  ocean 
and  that  was  to  tingle  his  bell." 

So  to  talk  of  a  possibly  nonexistent  blank  map  was 
the  Bellman's  way  of  covering  up  his  own  incompe- 
tence— of  which  he  was  very  well  aware.  He  was  a  con 
man  who  covered  his  incompetence  with  blustering 
bravado.  He  always  needed  to  appear  to  be  in  control 
of  any  situation,  and  if  not,  to  divert  the  attention  of 
his  crew  with  booze  (grog)  or  jokes  or  even  quota- 
tions to  make  him  look  grand.  It  is  typical  that  he  mis- 
quoted the  opening  words  of  Mark  Antony's  oration 
at  Caesar's  funeral  in  Shakespeare's  Julius  Caesar  (as 
noted  by  Martin  Gardner) . 

The  reason  the  Bellman  usually  wears  the  "mys- 
terious smile  as  if  he  knows  something  that  nobody 
else  could  understand"  (Oleg  Lipchenko  in  KL  86) 
is  that  he  knows  he's  a  twit  but  he  thinks  that  nobody 
else  does!  So  he  gives  steering  commands  that  his 
crew  cannot  interpret,  and  therefore  they  wonder 
"what  on  earth  was  the  helmsman  to  do?"  The  answer, 
of  course,  is  that  they  were  not  on  earth  but  on  the 
ocean,  where  steering  was  determined  by  the  MATH 
of  the  difficult  art  of  navigation,  rather  than  by  the 
perplexed  and  distressed  Bellman.  So  the  MATH  en- 
abled them  to  circumvent  the  danger  and  to  land  at 
last.  Once  they  had  done  so,  the  Bellman  quickly  re- 
gained his  leadership  status  and  attempted  to  over- 
come their  low  spirits  by  telling  bad  jokes.  When  that 
only  made  them  groan,  he  gave  them  all  enough 
booze  to  win  back  their  support — "so  they  drank  to 
his  health  and  they  gave  him  three  cheers." 

MAD   MAPS 

In  order  to  do  justice  to  my  task,  I  felt  that  I  need- 
ed to  be  sure  that  I  understood  the  basics  of  cartog- 


raphy. I  therefore  delved  into  an  amazing  publication 
called  The  Carte  Blanche  Atlas  (Figure  3).  I  soon  re- 
alized that  this  was  a  reliable  source  of  information, 
as  it  contains  Carroll's  Ocean  Chart  and  cites  Fit  the 
Second  without  errors. 

I  learned  that  there  are  crucial  differences  be- 
tween a  blank  map  and  a  blank  page.  Unlike  a  blank 
page,  a  blank  map: 

is  designed  by  a  cartographer 

is  a  frame 

represents  a  space  or  "territory" 

has  orientation 

is  readable 

has  accuracy 

suggests  scale  (though  it  may  sacrifice  exactitude 
in  favor  of  visual  utility) 

is  informative  (unavailability  of  data  does  not 
equal  nonexistence  of  data) 

is  something  unexpected 

Obviously,  the  Ocean  Chart  meets  all  of  these  cri- 
teria, and  if  it's  perfect,  then  don't  try  to  fix  it!  Howev- 
er, just  a  few  years  ago,  a  project  was  set  up  to  add  color 
to  the  original  Snark  illustrations,  and  they  couldn't 
resist  adding  to  the  Ocean  Chart  (Figure  4). 

There  has  been  some  discussion  by  Martin  Gard- 
ner (1962)  and  Clare  Imholtz  (2003)  comparing  the 
Bellman's  map  in  the  Snark  and  the  1:1  scale  map 
mentioned  by  Mein  Herr  in  Sylvie  and  Bruno  Conclud- 
ed. Certainly,  the  latter  would  have  been  the  largest 
map  ever  created.  However,  the  Klencke  Atlas  (1660) 
at  almost  six  feet  tall,  with  41  printed  wall  maps  on 
paper,  is  the  largest  book  in  the  world  (Figure  5).  It 


Figure  5.  The  world's  largest  (printed) 
map 


Figure  6.  The  world's  smallest 
Snark  map 


is  possible  that  my  miniature  copy  of  the  Bellman's 
Map,  at  1  x  1  inches  (3.8  x  3.2  cm)  is  one  of  the  small- 
est (Figure  6). 

TWENTY-ONE   CHART 
INTERPRETATIONS 

I  have  been  fascinated  by  the  many  different  ways  in 
which  the  many  Snark  illustrators  have  interpreted 
the  details  of  Fit  the  Second  as  they  relate  to  the  so- 
called  "Blank  Map"  and  the  ways  in  which  the  illustra- 
tions suggest  that  the  Bellman  conveyed  the  informa- 
tion to  his  crew. 

In  the  hope  that  at  least  some  of  my  readers  take 
a  second  look  at  each  of  them,  I  have  selected  21  of 
these.  They  are  depicted  below  in  chronological  or- 
der of  publication. 

References 

Blake,  Q.  (1976).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  Folio 

Society,  London. 
Bo  Press  (2009).  Bellman's  Map.  Bo  Press  Miniature 

Books,  Riverside,  California. 
Castle,  T.  (2005):  http://truds.deviantart.com/ 

gallery/?offset=24 
Capozzola,  M.  (2005).  http://capozzola.com/ 
Conley,  C.  (2007).  The  Carte  Blanche  Atlas  of  Uncharted 

Territories.  Perfect-bound  Paperback,  USA. 
Dixon,  J.  (1992).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  Lewis  Car- 
roll Society  of  North  America,  New  York. 
Ernst,  M.  (1950).  La  Chasse  au  Snark.  Editions  Pre- 
mieres, Paris  1950. 
Fisher,  J.  (2010).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  The  Folio 

Society,  London. 
Gardner,  M.  (1962).  The  Annotated  Snark.  Simon  & 

Schuster,  New  York. 
Gardner,  M.  (1981).  "The  Annotated  Snark."  In 

Lewis  Carroll's  "The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  "William 

Kaufmann,  Inc.,  in  cooperation  with  Bryn  Mawr 

College  Library,  Los  Altos,  California. 
Hinder,  F  (1989).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  Carroll 

Foundation,  Flemington,  Australia. 
Holiday,  H.  (1898).  "The  Snark's  Significance." 

Academy,  29  January. 
Holiday,  H.  (1914).  Reminiscences  of  My  Life.  Heine- 

mann,  London. 
Howick,  D.  (2009).  "The  Hunting  of  the  Butcher." 

Knight  Letter  II,  Issue  12,  Number  82. 
Imholtz,  C.  (2003).  Borges  and  Carroll:  On  a  Scale 

of  One  to  One.  Knight  Letter  Vol.  II,  Issue  1, 

Number  71. 
Jones,  H.  (1975).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  The 

Whittington  Press,  Andoversford. 
Kanfer,  S.  (1982).  "Books:  Wonderland  Without 

Alice."  www.time.com/time/magazine/ 

article/0,9l7l,925199,00.html 


Kerman,  D.  (1989).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  Shva 
Publishers,  Israel. 

KlenckeJ.  (1660).  The  KUncke  Atlas. 

Lipchenko,  O.  (2011).  "Butcher  in  the  Ruff:  Render- 
ing the  Snark  (A  Work  in  Progress)."  Knight  Letter 
II  Issue  16,  Number  86. 

Lord,  J.  V.  (2006).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  Inky 
Parrot  Press,  Artists'  Choice  Editions,  Church 
Hanborough,  England. 

Minnion.J.  (1976).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  John 
Minnion,  London. 

Mitchell,  C.  (1981).  "The  Designs  for  the  Snark."  In 
The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  William  Kaufmann. 

Oechsli,  K.  (1966).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark. 
Pantheon  Books,  New  York. 

Oxenbury,  H.  (1970).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark. 
Heinemann,  London. 

Pomar,  J.  (1999).  La  Chasse  au  Snark.  Edition  de  la 
Galerie  PILTZER,  Paris. 

Puttock,  B.  (illustrator),  and  Cathy  Bowern  (author) 
(1997).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark  Concluded. 
Angerona  Press,  Ryde. 

Rosett-Hafter,  G.  (2007).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark. 
Bell  Books,  London. 

Rubinger,  A.  (2000).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  Gal- 
Kalderon  Publishing,  22  Nahmani  St.,  Tel  Aviv, 
Israel. 

Singh,  M.  (2007).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark  -  Fit- 
fully illustrating  Lewis  Carroll  8c  other  graphic 
agonies,  www.justtheplaceforasnark.blogspot. 
com. 

Singh,  M.  (2010).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  Melville 
House,  Brooklyn,  New  York. 

Smith,  B.  (1995).  "More  Things  in  Heaven  and 
Earth."  Grazer  Philosophische  Studien,  50. 

Sporn,  M.  (1989).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  Michael 
Spom  Animation,  New  York. 

Sporn,  M.  (2007a).  http://www.michaelsporn 
animation.com/splog/?p=1297. 

Sporn,  M.  (2007b).  http://www.michaelsporn 
animation.  com/splog/?p=l  300. 

Steadman,  R.  (1975).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark. 
Michael  Dempsey,  London. 

Tigertail  Associates  (2004).  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark. 
Tigertail  Associates,  Los  Angeles  (with  restora- 
tion and  color  rendering  of  the  original  illustra- 
tions by  Henry  Holiday  by  George  Gennerich). 
http://www.tigtail.org/TIG/HOT/Scripts/ 
carroll_hunting_of_the_snark.l876.pdf. 

Tishkov,  L.  (1991).  Ohota  na  Snarka.  Rukitis,  Moscow. 

Torgard,  A.  (1994).  EftirSnarki.  Forlagio  Sprotin. 

Tufail.J.  (2003).  The  Illuminated  Snark.  International 
Carroll  Conference,  University  of  Rennes  2, 
October  17-18. 


2.  Helen  Oxenbury, 
1970 


i.  Kelly  Oechsli,  1966 


4 .  John  Minnion,  1976 


3.  Harold  Jones,  1975 


5.  Quentin  Blake,  1976 


IO 


7.  Frank  Hinder,  1989 


8.  Michael  Sporn,  1989 


i  o.  Jonathan  Dixon,  1 992 


9.  Leonid  Tishkov,  1991 


11 


14-  Ami  Rubinger,  2000 


12 


1 8.  Geneva  Rosett-H after,  2007 


20.  Mahendra  Singh,  2011 


1 9.  Jeffrey  Fisher,  2010 


21.  Oleg  Lipchenko,  2011 


13 


^ 


*s- 


EMILY  AGUILO-PEREZ 

ntirotub  a  Carrolmn  Lens 


I  remember  the  first  time  I  "met"  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land. I  was  maybe  five  or  six  years  old,  and  my  mom 
played  a  videocassette  that  she  had  used  to  record 
several  cartoons,  including  the  Disney  movie.  She  had 
recorded  it  when  it  premiered  on  the  Puerto  Rican 
network  that  was  then  called  Tele-Once.  Although  the 
movie  was  in  Spanish  and  I  understood  the  conversa- 
tions, I  really  did  not  have  any  idea  of  the  depths  of 
Alice's  story.  For  me,  it  was  just  a  movie  about  funny 
characters,  colorful  places,  and  beautiful  songs.  My 
attraction  to  the  movie  began  with  my 
fascination  with  the  Mad  Hatter,  for  he 
was  the  character  that  I  loved  the  most. 
His  big  hat  and  funny  comments  made 
me  want  to  one  day  sit  down  for  tea  with 
him.  During  a  trip  to  Disney  World  in 
the  summer  of  2008,  when  meeting  that 
character,  I — a  22  year  old  at  the  time — 
almost  started  to  cry.  Then  I  met  him 
again  in  2009,  and  it  was  as  magical  as 
the  year  before. 

Though  the  Hatter  remains  a  favor- 
ite character,  Alice  has  taken  a  very  spe- 
cial place  in  my  heart.  I  began  to  see  some 
resemblance  between  Alice  and  myself. 
At  first,  when  I  was  a  child,  I  thought  the 
Disney  movie  was  about  a  little  girl  who 
got  lost  in  the  woods  and  just  wanted  to  go  home.  I 
could  relate  to  that.  Not  long  before  that,  I  had  gotten 
lost  at  the  supermarket  and  thought  that  I  would  nev- 
er see  my  parents  again.  But  I  remembered  the  very 
good  advice  that  my  parents  had  given  me,  and  I  went 
straight  to  the  manager's  office,  where  my  parents 
were  paged  and  soon  picked  me  up.  I  always  thought 
that  Alice  should  have  done  something  similar,  but  in 
a  way  she  was  thinking  similarly  to  me;  she  thought 
about  all  the  good  advice  that  she  had  been  given  and 
tried  to  apply  it  to  her  situation,  although  for  her  it 
was  not  successful.  After  that,  I  read  the  books,  fell  in 
love  with  them,  and  understood  how  many  important 
elements  the  movie  had  removed.  Yet,  I  never  imag- 
ined that  a  story  I  loved  so  much  would  become  such 
an  important  part  of  my  life. 

In  2008,  during  a  Literature  Festival  at  my  univer- 
sity, the  University  of  Puerto  Rico  at  Mayagiiez,  I  had 


the  honor  of  portraying  Alice  in  one  of  the  drama 
skits.  By  that  time  no  one  was  aware  of  my  love  (and 
beginning  obsession)  with  Alice  and  the  stories.  It 
was  a  magical  moment  for  me  to  put  on  a  blue  dress, 
white  stockings,  a  white  pinafore,  and  become  a  little 
girl  again.  I  had  to  recite  the  lines  I  had  been  memo- 
rizing throughout  my  childhood  while  watching  the 
Disney  movie.  In  this  particular  case,  the  director  of 
the  skit  had  done  a  mixture  of  the  book  and  the  Dis- 
ney animation.  I  had  been  preparing  for  this  role  my 
whole  life — so  much  so  that  I  was  able  to 
improvise  and  actually  become  Alice  in 
another  skit,  where  we  had  no  script  and 
different  literary  characters  were  being 
interviewed.  At  that  moment  I  became 
Alice.  On  other  occasions  I  also  became 
the  Mad  Hatter.  In  fact,  for  three  con- 
secutive years  I  dressed  up  as  the  Hatter 
for  Halloween.  It  was  always  fun  to  be 
someone  different,  especially  someone 
from  my  favorite  story.  Of  course,  playing 
dress-up  and  memorizing  lines  have  not 
been  the  only  moments  of  my  life  where 
Lewis  Carroll  played  a  role. 

The  stories  about  Alice  had  an  enor- 
mous significance  in  my  life  as  a  gradu- 
ate student  as  well.  Every  time  I  read  the 
books,  I  am  able  to  discover  something  new;  I  am  able 
to  laugh  at  a  new  joke  I  finally  understand.  I  find  new 
linguistic  features  that  puzzle  my  mind  and  challenge 
my  intellect.  More  importantly,  every  time  I  read  the 
books,  I  am  able  to  identify  with  Alice  for  different 
reasons.  In  a  way,  I  am  a  real-life  Alice.  I  remember 
not  fitting  in  and  always  being  odd  in  school.  I  never 
wanted  to  follow  the  crowd,  and  I  did  not  give  in  to 
peer  pressure,  but  it  was  never  a  painful  experience 
for  me.  Alice  is  somewhat  different  from  everyone 
around  her  and  she  does  not  always  do  what  she  is 
told.  She  speaks  her  mind  and  stands  up  to  others, 
even  adults,  always  defending  her  beliefs.  Most  of  all, 
she  cares  about  those  around  her,  both  good  and  bad, 
and  she  tries  her  best  to  understand  the  pains  and 
frustrations  of  the  people  and  creatures  she  has  con- 
tact with.  Alice,  more  often  than  not,  does  not  fit  in, 
not  in  the  real  world  and  not  in  Wonderland;  yet  she 


14 


always  follows  her  heart,  even  if  it  means  being  differ- 
ent. She  goes  through  difficult  moments  in  Wonder- 
land, yet  she  is  able  to  overcome  any  struggle,  turning 
what  could  have  been  a  nightmare  for  someone  else 
into  an  adventure.  The  stories  about  Alice  became  my 
outlet  and  my  comfort  when  I  felt  that  I  did  not  be- 
long anywhere,  especially  because  I  felt  a  connection 
to  her  that  I  have  never  felt  with  any  other  fictional 
character. 

Curiouser  and  curiouser,  it  was  the  newer  Alice 
who  was  emerging  in  the  films  of  the  twenty-first  cen- 
tury that  I  could  not  identify  with  anymore.  In  Tim 
Burton's  2010  film  and  in  SyFy's  Alice,  the  character 
was  an  adult,  yet  despite  her  being  closer  to  me  in 
age  than  the  Alice  of  the  books,  there  was  a  certain 
magic,  a  part  of  the  original  character,  her  charisma, 
her  personality,  that  just  was  not  there  anymore.  The 
new  Alice  was  the  heroine  of  the  story,  but  for  very 
different  reasons.  She  was  not  driven  by  curiosity,  she 
was  afraid  to  explore,  she  despised  being  in  such  a 
fantastical  place.  All  that  magic  had  been  taken  away 
from  the  adult  versions  of  Alice,  and  all  that  was  left 
was  a  woman  who  had  a  prophecy  to  fulfill.  She  was 
to  slay  a  monster.  Seeing  this  change  in  the  story  mo- 
tivated me  to  explore  why  this  had  happened  and  to 
write  my  master's  thesis  about  her.  My  aim  was  not  to 
criticize  the  movies  or  to  pinpoint  everything  that  was 
changed  from  the  books,  but  to  understand  how  Al- 
ice had  grown  up.  It  did  not  happen  overnight.  This 
growth  was  not  the  result  of  eating  a  piece  of  mush- 
room; the  change  happened  progressively.  It  was  for 
this  reason  that  I  took  on  the  challenge  of  delving 
more  closely  into  the  adaptations  of  Alice  and  the 
representation  of  the  character. 

It  was  also  during  this  time  that  I  became  aware 
of  the  existence  of  a  frabjous  group  named  the  Lewis 
Carroll  Society  of  North  America,  and  after  learn- 
ing more  about  it,  I  became  a  member.  I  discovered 
even  more  about  the  joys  of  Wonderland  through  this 
group.  It  offers  an  academic  yet  friendly  forum  where 
scholars  and  fans  of  Lewis  Carroll's  work  can  get  to- 
gether in  an  intellectual  exchange.  Being  a  member 
of  this  society  has  provided  me  with  different  forums 
and  resources  I  would  have  not  found  otherwise,  and 
better  prepared  me  for  my  research.  The  first  meet- 
ing I  attended  was  at  the  Rosenbach  Museum  and  Li- 
brary in  Philadelphia  in  April,  2010.  This  was  my  first 
time  traveling  by  myself,  so  I  felt  like  Alice  exploring 
a  new  world  on  my  own.  Nevertheless,  I  loved  every 
moment  of  it!  Not  only  was  I  able  to  meet  new  people 
and  visit  historical  places,  I  was  able  to  learn  so  much 
about  Alice  and  I  felt  special  in  being  able  to  see  some 
of  Carroll's  original  documents.  I  was  already  excited 
about  the  following  Fall  meeting  and  became  even 
more  excited  when  I  found  out  that  Jenny  Woolf  was 
one  of  the  speakers.  Her  book  was  one  of  the  main 


sources  for  my  thesis,  and  I  really  wanted  to  meet 
such  a  brilliant  person. 

Having  already  made  arrangements  to  go,  three 
days  before  the  November  meeting,  tragedy  struck. 
My  grandmother  passed  away,  and  even  though  I 
had  my  plane  tickets  and  suitcase  ready,  family  always 
comes  first,  especially  when  there  is  a  loss.  However, 
in  spring  201 1  I  had  the  opportunity  to  fly  to  the  West 
Coast  for  the  first  time  and  attend  another  amazing 
LCSNA  meeting,  this  time  in  San  Francisco.  Once 
again,  I  met  another  group  of  wonderful  Wonderland 
"creatures,"  and  this  time  I  was  able  to  spend  more 
time  with  them.  Despite  being  sick  the  entire  week- 
end, I  had  one  of  the  most  Wonderful  times  of  my 
life.  I  couldn't  believe  I  was  having  so  much  fun  while 
also  doing  further  research  for  my  thesis.  Moments 
like  those  reminded  me  why  I  had  chosen  Alice  as 
the  topic  for  my  thesis,  and  they  made  me  realize  that 
I  truly  enjoyed  and  loved  the  work  I  had  to  do;  even 
more  so  when  I  was  invited  to  speak  at  the  fall  2011 
meeting  — a  real  honor  for  me!  It  is  exciting  to  be 
able  to  share  my  work,  my  thesis,  my  Wonderland  with 
such  a  fantastic  group  of  people. 

During  the  examination  part  of  my  thesis  defense, 
one  of  my  professors  asked  me,  "Did  you  choose  the 
topic  because  you  were  passionate  about  Alice  in  Won- 
derland?" My  answer  was,  "Yes  and  no."  Of  course,  I 
briefly  explained  to  them  my  contradictory  response. 
Yes,  I  have  always  loved  the  stories,  the  characters,  the 
music,  the  costumes,  and  pretty  much  anything  relat- 
ed to  Alice.  Once  in  a  while,  I  would  talk  to  my  friends 
and  family  about  Alice  in  Wonderland,  and  every  time 
I  visited  Disney  World,  I  wanted  to  meet  some  of  the 
characters.  Yet,  I  never  thought  of  it  as  being  passion- 
ate about  the  stories,  I  was  just  a  fan.  In  retrospect,  I 
think  it  could  even  be  called  an  obsession.  I  collected 
pins,  bought  Alice  in  Wonderland  t-shirts,  bought  dif- 
ferent versions  of  the  books,  and  watched  more  movie 
adaptations.  It  wasn't  until  I  selected  Alice  as  the  topic 
for  my  thesis  that  I  truly  became  passionate  about  it. 
So,  no;  in  a  way,  I  didn't  choose  the  topic  because  I 
was  passionate  about  it — I  became  passionate  about  it 
because  of  my  thesis. 

This  answered  another  inquiry  from  my  profes- 
sor: "When  did  you  find  out  you  were  passionate 
about  Alice  in  Wonderland?"  Once  I  began  the  research 
process,  I  became  more  immersed  in  everything  Won- 
derland. I  read  more  than  fifty  books  and  articles 
about  Lewis  Carroll,  about  Alice,  about  other  films, 
and  I  watched  even  more  movies  based  on  the  stories. 
I  read  novels,  comics,  fan  fiction,  and  lyrics,  among 
other  things.  Each  text  I  read  added  to  my  already 
enormous  fascination  with  the  stories  and,  of  course, 
the  author.  All  I  could  talk  about  was  Alice;  my  friends 
constantly  sent  me  Alice-related  links  to  videos,  blogs, 
articles,  restaurants,  hotels,  and  anything  imaginable. 
I  became  known  as  "the  Alice  girl"  in  my  department, 


*5 


and  some  professors  even  called  me  Alice.  If  some- 
one were  to  discuss  Alice  in  a  class  or  in  any  random 
conversation,  they  were  careful  about  not  misquoting 
or  making  erroneous  references  about  the  stories,  for 
they  knew  I  would  probably  correct  them  if  they  did. 
Writing  a  thesis  about  Alice  became  my  Wonder- 
land, the  place  where  I  could  escape  to  and  be  myself. 
Never  in  a  million  years  would  I  have  thought  that  a 
nonsense  children's  story  would  have  so  much  mean- 
ing in  my  life.  The  mere  thought  of  it  makes  me  think 
that  I  may  be  just  as  mad  as  a  hatter.  But  I  cannot 
forget  what  the  White  Queen  told  Alice:  "Why,  some- 
times I've  believed  as  many  as  six  impossible  things 
before  breakfast."  Writing  my  thesis  helped  me  be- 
lieve in  impossible  things  too.  One  of  these  things  was 
that  even  if  I  am  an  adult  with  many  responsibilities, 
I  am  still  a  child  at  heart,  and  there  is  nothing  wrong 
with  that.  In  Tim  Burton's  and  the  SyFy  Network's 
versions,  Alice  became  an  adult,  and  because  of  this, 
her  experiences  in  Wonderland  became  tasks  rather 
than  adventures;  they  became  a  burden  rather  than 
an  opportunity  to  be  free  and  be  herself.  Alice  had 
forgotten  the  child  version  of  herself;  she  had  erased 


her  adventures  from  her  memory,  and  she  had  been 
pulled  into  the  abyss  of  adulthood. 

The  opening  song  for  the  1951  Disney  film  adap- 
tation asks  the  following  questions:  Where  is  the  land 
beyond  the  eye,  that  people  cannot  see,  where  can  it  be?  ... 
Alice  in  Wonderland,  where  is  the  path  to  Wonderland?  I 
believe  the  path  to  Wonderland  lies  in  each  person's 
ability  and  willingness  to  be  a  child,  for  it  is  only  by 
freeing  ourselves  from  the  burdens  of  adulthood  that 
we  can  look  at  the  world  with  innocent  eyes,  and  dis- 
cover that  there  is  an  adventure  in  everything,  every 
day — -just  as  it  happened  with  Alice,  who  was  finally 
able  to  embrace  Wonderland  when  she  allowed  her- 
self to  be  a  child  at  heart.  I  think  a  lot  of  us,  members 
of  the  LCSNA,  have  been  able  to  find  that  child  in  our 
hearts,  and  we  can  be  silly,  mad  as  hatters,  nonsensi- 
cal, and  happy  solving  life's  riddles.  We  can  be  em- 
braced by  Lewis  Carroll's  wonderful  creation  by  en- 
joying a  book  "for  children"  without  feeling  ashamed. 
So  let's  all  continue  to  embrace  the  child  in  all  of  us, 
let's  continue  with  the  fun,  and  more  importantly, 
let's  continue  exploring  Wonderland,  for  there  is  still 
so  much  more  to  discover. 


16 


^ 


Jg~ 


-iat 


The  Curious  Door:  Charles  Hodgson  s  the  Iffley  Yew 


ALISON  GOPNIK  fe'ALVY  RAY  SMITH 


^^ 


;=*^r 


Mfei  Adventures  in  Wonderland  lives  because 
it  speaks  to  the  imagination  of  children  ev- 
erywhere. But  it  is  so  potent  partly  because 
it  was  originally  composed  for  and  about  one  par- 
ticular child.  Charles  Dodgson  turned  the  everyday, 
specific,  banal  events  of  Alice  Liddell's  life  into  magic 
and  dreams — or  rather,  he  revealed  the  magical  and 
dreamlike  character  of  each  child's  experience  of 
the  everyday,  specific,  and  banal.  Dinah,  the  treacle 
well,  and  the  Sheep's  shop  are  enchanted  versions  of 
specific,  real  cats  and  wells  and  shops,  and  the  wet, 
bedraggled  party  of  animals  in  the  pool  of  tears  was 
originally  a  wet,  bedraggled  party  of  spinster  sisters 
and  children  caught  in  an  English  summer  rainstorm. 
These  transformations  of  the  everyday  into  the  ex- 
traordinary help  make  Wonderland  so  compelling. 

We  suggest  another  such  link  between  the  real 
life  of  Charles  Dodgson  and  the  Liddell  sisters  and 
what  looks  like  a  particularly  surreal  and  unlikely 
detail  in  the  book — the  door  in  the  tree.  The  door 
appears  after  Alice  leaves  the  Mad  Tea  Party,  and  it 
leads  her  back  to  the  hall: 

"At  any  rate  I'll  never  go  there  again!"  said 
Alice  as  she  picked  her  way  through  the  wood. 
"It's  the  stupidest  tea-party  I  ever  was  at  in  all 
my  life!"  Just  as  she  said  this,  she  noticed  that 
one  of  the  trees  had  a  door  leading  right  into 
it.  "That's  very  curious!"  she  thought.  "But  ev- 
erything's curious  today.  I  think  I  may  as  well 
go  in  at  once."  And  in  she  went. 

The  passage  is  very  similar  in  Alice's  Adventures 
under  Ground,  Dodgson 's  original  version  of  the  story, 
which  included  more  specific  references  to  actual 
events.  However,  it  takes  place  just  after  Alice  encoun- 
ters the  pigeon,  and  it  has  one  significant  difference: 
the  "door"  is  a  "doorway." 

"However,  I've  got  to  my  right  size  again: 
the  next  thing  is,  to  get  into  that  beautiful 
garden — how  is  that  to  be  done,  I  wonder?" 
Just  as  she  said  this,  she  noticed  that  one  of 
the  trees  had  a  doorway  leading  right  into  it. 
"That's  very  curious!"  she  thought,  "but  every- 
thing's curious  today:  I  may  as  well  go  in."  And 
in  she  went. 


The  door  in  the  tree  is  also  the  subject  of  a  full- 
page  illustration  by  Dodgson — one  that  was  not  re- 
produced by  Tenniel  in  the  later  book  (Fig.  1). 

We  suggest  that  this  curious  tree  was  based  on  a 
real  tree,  the  Iffley  Yew,  a  very  old  hollow  tree  with  a 
four-foot  opening  in  one  side — a  child-sized  doorway, 
if  not  a  door — growing  in  the  churchyard  in  the  village 
of  Iffley,  two  miles  down  the  Thames  from  Oxford. 

We  will  establish  the  following: 

1.  The  Iffley  Yew  was  well  known  in  the  early 
nineteenth  century,  and  Dodgson  would  almost 
certainly  have  read  about  it  as  a  picturesque  and 
historically  significant  local  landmark. 

2.  Dodgson  knew  Iffley  well,  particularly  the 
Church,  and  visited  it  often,  particularly  be- 
tween 1862  and  1864  when  he  was  writing  Alice's 
Adventures  under  Ground.  He  had  several  cleri- 
cal friends  who  lived  there.  He  planned  to  take 
photographs  there. 

3.  Dodgson  went  to  Iffley  with  Alice  Liddell  and 
her  sisters  on  at  least  two  occasions,  and  possibly 
more. 

4.  There  is  a  photograph  of  the  Iffley  Yew  by  the 
Oxford  photographer  Henry  Taunt  that  we 
can  date  to  between  May  18,  1862,  and  March 
8,  1866,  a  period  roughly  contemporaneous 
with  the  composition  of  Alice's  Adventures  under 
Ground.  The  photograph  shows  the  opening 
in  the  tree  clearly,  and  the  tree  bears  a  striking 
resemblance  to  Dodgson's  illustration. 

THE   IFFLEY   YEW 

Iffley  Church  was,  and  is,  famous  as  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  best  preserved  Romanesque  churches 
in  England.  It  dates  from  the  1170s,  with  very  few 
alterations  since.  It  is  particularly  well  known  for  its 
fantastical,  grotesque,  and  very  Carrollian  carvings  of 
real  and  mythical  animals,  including  gryphons.1  In 
the  churchyard  there  is  an  exceptionally  large  and 
old  yew  tree,  currently  some  25  feet  in  girth.  The  tree 
is  hollow.  Currently,  the  cavity  has  been  partially  filled 
with  concrete,  stones,  and  earth,  but  the  east  side  still 
has  an  opening  about  three  feet  high  and  a  foot  off 
the  ground.  From  the  outside,  the  opening  is  now 
completely  hidden  by  the  branches  that  reach  to  the 
ground  (Fig.  2). 


17 


Figure  2.  The  Iffley  Church  and  Yew  today  (July  2011). 


Figure  1.  Dodgson's  illustration  for  Alice's 
Adventures  under  Ground. 


Figure  3.  Illustration  from  Skelton's  Antiquities  of  Oxfordshire,  1823. 


The  tree  was  rather  different  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  however.  Descriptions  and  pictures  of  the 
tree  appear  in  many  sources.  It  was  described  care- 
fully in  John  Loudon's  standard  Trees  and  Shrubs  of 
Great  Britain  in  1838: 

The  Iffley  Yew  stands  in  Iffley  churchyard, 
near  Oxford,  nearly  opposite  the  south-east 
corner  of  the  church,  and  between  that  and 
an  ancient  cross.  This  tree  is  supposed  to  be 
coeval  with  the  church,  which,  it  is  believed, 
was  built  previously  to  the  Norman  conquest. 
The  dimensions  of  the  tree,  kindly  taken  for 
us  in  September,  1836,  by  Mr.  Baxter,  were  as 
follows: — Girt  of  the  trunk,  at  2  ft.  from  the 
ground,  20  ft.,  and  at  4  ft.  from  the  ground, 
where  the  branches  begin,  17  ft.  The  trunk  is 
now  little  more  than  a  shell,  and  there  is  an 
opening  on  the  east  side  of  the  tree  which  is 
4  ft.  high,  and  about  4  ft.  in  width;  the  cavity 
within  is  7  ft.  long,  4  ft.  wide,  and  4  ft.  high  in 


the  highest  part.  The  height  of  the  tree  is  22 
ft.;  and  there  are  about  20  principal  branches, 
all  of  which,  except  two,  are  in  a  very  vigor- 
ous and  flourishing  state.  The  diameter  of  the 
head  is  25  ft.  each  way2 

In  The  Gentleman's  Magazine  of  1804  there  is  a 
description  of  two  bored  travelers  who  "alternately 
thrust  themselves  into  the  tree,"  a  description  which 
fits  the  dimensions  described  in  Loudon. :i  The  tree 
was  also  described  and  illustrated  in  Oxford  guide- 
books such  as  The  Oxford  University  and  City  Guide  of 
1818, '  Antiquities  of  Oxfordshire  of  1823  (Fig.  3),5  and 
Memorials  of  Oxford  of  1837,6  among  others.  Engrav- 
ings of  it  appeared  in  The  Illustrated  London  News  of 
18457  and  The  Penny  Illustrated  News  of  1850.s  The  de- 
scriptions emphasize  both  the  great  age  of  the  tree 
and  its  picturesque  appearance.  It  also  appeared  at 
length  in  the  self-consciously  "artistic"  travel  writ- 
ings of  The  Wanderings  of  a  Pen  and  Pencil  by  Francis  P. 
Palmer  and  Alfred  Crowquill  in  1846,  which  include 


•■** 


Figure  4.  Illustration  from 
The  Art-Journal 
of  June  1,  1857. 


IFFLEY   CHUKCII. 


appealingly  Victorian  descriptions  of  both  the  Iffley 
cottages  ("dainty  bowers  of  delight"  where  "the  syl- 
labubs in  the  open  air  were  charming")  and  the  Yew 
itself:  "The  roots  of  this  surprising  vegetable  hero 
were  probably  strong  in  earth  when  Richard  the  Lion- 
hearted  was  beating  down  the  Paynim  chivalry  in  the 
Holy  Land."9 

Most  significantly  of  all,  for  our  purposes,  the  tree 
was  both  described  and  illustrated,  with  the  opening 
prominently  depicted,  in  The  Art-Journal  of  June  1, 
1857  (Fig.  4): 

The  church-yard  contains  an  aged  yew  tree — 
so  aged  that  no  stretch  of  fancy  is  required  to 
believe  it  was  planted  when  the  first  stone  of 
the  sacred  structure  was  laid.* 

*  It  has  been  generally  stated  that  yew-trees  were  planted 
near  churches  to  supply  bow-staves  for  archers,  at  a 
time  when  archery  was  much  practised,  and  enforced 
by  law.  But  the  custom  is  now  believed  to  be  much 
older,  and  to  be  a  relic  of  paganism;  these  trees  being 
sacred  to  the  dead  from  a  very  early  period,  and  there- 
fore especially  venerated  by  die  Druids,  were  adopted 
by  the  Romans  and  Saxons;  hence  "the  church  was 
brought  to  the  tree,  and  not  the  tree  to  die  church"  for 
the  eminent  botanist  Decandolle  notes  that  the  yews 
at  Fountains  and  Crowhurst  are  1200  years  old,  while 
that  at  Fortingale,  in  Scotland,  is  believed  to  be  1400 
years  old.'" 

This  passage  and  the  picture  were  part  of  a  year- 
long serialization  called  "The  Book  of  the  Thames, 
from  Its  Rise  to  Its  Fall"  by  the  editor  of  the  Journal, 
Samuel  C.  Hall,  and  his  wife.  The  Art-Journal  was  the 
leading  art  magazine  of  its  time  and  an  early  advo- 
cate of  photography.  We  know  that  Dodgson  read  it, 
since  some  of  his  first  photographs  in  1856  were  pho- 
tographs of  pages  from  the  Journal." 

So  the  Yew,  like  the  Church,  was  well  known  as  a 
picturesque,  historically  significant,  and  romantically 


(if  not  always  entirely  accurately)  depicted  ancient 
relic  in  Dodgson 's  time. 

DODGSON   IN   IFFLEY 

Dodgson's  diaries  record  two  visits  to  Iffley  in  1857.'- 
The  diaries  from  April  1858  to  April  1862  are  missing. 
Eleven  further  visits  are  recorded  in  the  period  be- 
tween May  1862,  when  the  diaries  recommence,  and 
November  1864,  when  Dodgson  presented  the  fin- 
ished Alice's  Adventures  under  Ground  to  Alice  Liddell." 

Dodgson  had  several  friends  and  acquaintances 
who  lived  in  Iffley  between  1857  and  1864.  They  in- 
cluded William  Henry  Charsley;  James  Rumsey  and 
his  family;  the  "Perpetual  Curate"  of  Iffley,  Thomas 
Acton  Warburton;  and  John  Slatter  and  his  family. 
Dodgson  specifically  records  visiting  and  dining  with 
the  Charsleys,  the  Rumseys,  and  Warburton  in  Iffley 
in  his  diaries."  Dodgson  was  also  friendly  with  William 
Ranken,  who  succeeded  Slatter  as  Vicar  of  Sandford- 
on-Thames  in  1862  and,  according  to  the  diary,  lived 
in  lodgings  in  Sandford,  a  short  way  farther  down  the 
river  from  Iffley.15  John  Slatter,  Elizabeth  Rumsey,  and 
Thomas  Warburton  are  all  listed  as  living  in  Iffley  in 
the  1861  census  (with  James  Rumsey  listed  separately 
in  Oxford  at  his  college).16 

Although  he  does  not  specifically  record  visiting 
him  in  Iffley  in  the  extant  diaries,  Dodgson  was  par- 
ticularly close  to  John  Slatter  and  his  family.  Slatter 
was  born  in  Iffley  and  was  Vicar  of  nearby  Sandford- 
on-Thames  from  1852  through  1861. '"  He  had  a 
first  in  mathematics  at  Oxford,  and  was  an  amateur 
astronomer,  meteorologist,  and  antiquarian,  and  he 
had  a  young  daughter,  Bessie.  In  the  Letters,  Dodgson 
records  a  visit  from  "some  friends. . .  the  John  Slatters" 
to  see  photographs  on  December  18,  1860,  when  the 
Slatters  lived  at  Iffley  (in  fact,  in  "an  awful  breach  of 
court  etiquette"  he  uses  this  visit  to  excuse  himself 


!9 


from  sending  the  photographs  to  Prince  Albert  to 
view).18  He  also  photographed  both  John  Slatter  and 
Bessie  in  1860  and  photographed  seven-year-old  Bes- 
sie again  (with  a  guinea  pig)  probably  in  1861. 19  Slat- 
ter became  Vicar  at  Streatley  and  moved  there  early 
in  1862,  when  Ranken  succeeded  him  at  Sandford. 
According  to  the  diaries,  Dodgson  visited  the  Slatters 
at  least  four  times  at  Streatley  between  1 862  and  1 864, 
although  they  were  now  a  train  ride  away.2"  It  seems 
very  likely,  then,  that  Dodgson  also  visited  the  Slatters 
at  Iffley  during  the  period  of  the  missing  diaries. 

Dodgson  also  had  close  connections  to  Iffley 
Church.  The  diaries  record  that  he  attended  services 
there  three  times.  He  also  records  visiting  the  Rec- 
tory three  times  and  interacting  with  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Warburton,  the  Perpetual  Curate  and  de  facto  Vicar, 
and  his  extended  family  of  sisters-in-law,  nieces,  and 
nephews.  And  he  records  assisting  with  the  church 
school  and  playing  croquet  in  the  Rectory  garden.21 

At  the  time  that  Dodgson  visited  Iffley,  Warbur- 
ton and  Iffley  Church  were  at  the  center  of  Barchester 
Towers-Mke  religious  and  aesthetic  controversies.  Rev- 
erend Warburton  himself  is  a  figure  straight  out  of 
Trollope,  a  man  marked  by  irascibility  and  arrogance 
as  well  as  energy  and  zeal.  He  was  an  enthusiast  for 
both  High  Church  theology  and  medieval  architec- 
ture and  history — he  wrote  a  book  called  Rollo  and 
His  Race:  Or  Footsteps  of  the  Normans — and  he  worked 
hard,  in  spite  of  substantial  opposition,  to  return  the 
church  to  what  he  thought  of  as  its  original  state.  He 
was  responsible  for  restoring  the  ancient  cross  that 
stood  direcdy  in  front  of  the  Yew  in  1857,  and  for 
adding  a  newly  carved  top  to  replace  the  original. 
(The  unrestored  cross  can  be  seen  in  the  Antiquities 
of  Oxfordshire  and  The  Art-Journal  engravings  (Fig.  3 
and  Fig.  4).  He  also  removed  a  fifteenth-century  per- 
pendicular window  in  the  church  in  1857,  replacing  it 
with  a  restoration  of  the  original  Romanesque  oculus. 
He  equipped  it  with  vivid  Victorian  stained  glass  com- 
memorating the  death  of  his  brother.  He  also  wanted 
to  remove  the  fifteenth-century  windows  inside  the 
church,  but  couldn't  overcome  the  opposition  from 
the  architects  and  the  community. ~ 

Dodgson  (and  Alice  Liddell)  were  particularly 
close  to  another  enthusiast  for  medieval  architecture 
in  general  and  the  Iffley  Church  in  particular — none 
other  than  Alice's  father,  Henry  Liddell,  himself.  Lid- 
dell was  both  a  vice-president  and  a  frequent  member 
of  the  governing  committee  of  the  Oxford  Architec- 
tural Society,  originally  known  as  the  Oxford  Society 
for  Promoting  the  Study  of  Gothic  Architecture.  He 
continued  as  member  through  at  least  1870.  John  Slat- 
ter was  also  a  member.  In  1841  Liddell  presented  a  no- 
tably sensible  and  moderate  paper  to  the  society  about 
the  possible  restoration  of  the  Iffley  Church,  arguing 
for  restoring  the  oculus  but  not  the  side  windows. 2:( 


It  is  hard  for  us  now  to  recapture  the  intense 
Victorian  enthusiasm  for  all  things  medieval — War- 
burton referred  to  the  fifteenth-century  windows  as 
"Tudor  blemishes"  and  even  the  moderate  Henry  Lid- 
dell startlingly  argued  for  the  removal  of  "Italian  alter 
(sic)  pieces  and  square  sleeping-boxes  and  all  the  oth- 
er incongruities  with  which  our  Churches  have  been 
disfigured  since  the  period  called  'the  Renaissance' 
when  all  true  taste  seems  to  have  departed  from  us."24 

Dodgson  was  no  exception.  He  was  an  enthusiast 
for  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement  in  art,  which  also 
advocated  a  return  to  pre-Renaissance  aesthetics,  and 
was  a  personal  friend  of  many  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
artists.  Of  course,  he  also  saw  the  comic  side.  "Jab- 
berwocky"  began  as  a  parody  of  obscure  Anglo-Saxon 
poetry,  and  there  are  many  references  to  Normans 
and  Saxons  in  the  Alice  books.  Alice  thinks  that  the 
mouse  might  have  come  over  with  William  the  Con- 
queror, "For,  with  all  her  knowledge  of  history,  Alice 
had  no  very  clear  notion  how  long  ago  anything  had 
happened" — a  description  that  might  apply  to  the 
chroniclers  of  the  Iffley  Yew  who  combined  Normans, 
Saxons,  and  Druids  into  a  single  hazy  medieval  past. 
But  there  was  no  doubt  that  Iffley  Church  and  the 
Yew  were  part  of  that  past,  and  Dodgson  would  surely 
have  shared  Warburton 's  and  Henry  Liddell 's  fascina- 
tion with  their  medieval  character. 

IFFLEY   PHOTOGRAPHY 

In  his  diaries,  Dodgson  records  his  intention  to  take 
photographs  at  Iffley  on  four  separate  occasions, 
though  it's  not  clear  whether  he  actually  succeeded 
in  doing  so.  The  first  record  is  a  May  1857  entry  made 
during  the  time  that  the  Thames  series  was  appear- 
ing in  The  Art-Journal:  "I  am  thinking  of  going  over 
someday  to  photograph  the  church  there,  and  they 
undertake  to  borrow  for  me  a  room  at  the  Rectory, 
which  is  at  present  uninhabited."25 

In  June  of  1862  he  records  that  he  is  planning 
to  take  photographs  of  the  Rumseys  and  the  Warbur- 
ton children,  among  others,  in  the  Rectory,  and  in  a 
later  June  entry  he  visits  the  Rectory  and  arranges  to 
take  his  camera  there  on  July  10.26  (By  then  Warbur- 
ton had  restored  the  Rectory  and  moved  in.)  In  fact, 
however,  on  July  10  he  records  taking  photographs 
in  Christ  Church,  so  it  seems  unlikely  that  he  also 
did  so  in  Iffley.  On  the  other  hand,  one  surviving  pic- 
ture from  that  time,  0785  in  Dodgson 's  photograph 
numbering,  is  a  photograph  of  Mrs.  Rumsey  and  her 
daughter  Leila  (short  for  Cornelia).27  The  number- 
ing suggests  that  it  was  taken  sometime  in  July,  so  it 
seems  that  it  was  either  taken  in  Christ  Church  on 
July  10  or  possibly  taken  in  Iffley  on  a  different  day. 
Leila,  according  to  British  birth  records,  was  born  in 
1857  in  Iffley,  and  so  was  almost  five  years  old  injury 
1862,  which  also  fits  her  age  in  the  picture.2829 


20 


Figure  5.  Old  photographs 

of  If/ley  Church  and  the 

Yew  (English  Heritage 

Archives). 


-  --.—-:3> 


5a.  1862-1866   *P 


5b.  1870 


*  %dt^^M 


On  July  14,  1862,  Dodgson  again  records  that 
he  had  "settled  to  send  my  camera  over"  to  Iffley  on 
"Monday  [July]  the  20"',  if  nothing  prevents"  (though 
this  was  actually  July  21). 30  But,  again,  it  is  not  clear 
whether  he  succeeded  in  doing  so.  Finally,  he  also 
includes  Augusta  Warburton,  the  Rev.  Warburton's 
niece — whom  he  had  planned  to  photograph  in  the 
June  1862  entry — in  a  long  list  in  the  diary  of  children 
either  already  photographed  or  to  be  photographed, 
dated  March  25,  1863."  The  list  also  includes  Bessie 
Slatter  and  Cornelia  Rumsey,  as  well  as  the  Liddell 
sisters.  No  photograph  of  Augusta  survives,  however. 
So  we  cannot  prove  that  Dodgson  actually  took  pho- 
tographs in  Iffley  Rectory,  but  he  certainly  planned 
to  do  so  and  looked  at  Iffley  with  a  photographic  eye. 


ALICE   IN   IFFLEY 

So  Dodgson  knew  Iffley  and  the  Church  well.  But 
what  about  Alice?  One  of  the  first  records  of  the  re- 
commenced diaries  reads 

May  26,  1862 

Went  down  the  river  with  Southey,  taking  Ina, 
Alice,  and  Edith  with  us:  we  only  went  to  Iffley. 
Even  then  it  was  hard  work  rowing  up  again, 
the  stream  is  so  strong.'2 

This  record  takes  place  a  little  before  the  wet  ex- 
pedition to  Nuneham  that  inspired  the  pool  of  tears, 
on  June  17,  and  the  famous  trip  to  Godstowwhen  the 
story  was  first  told,  on  July  4.:,:1  Wakeling  notes  that 
there  were  almost  certainly  earlier  expeditions  with  Al- 
ice and  her  sisters  on  the  river.  In  her  reminiscences, 
Alice  Liddell  says  that  they  took  both  full-day  excur- 


21 


Figure  6.  The  1862-1864 

illustration  and 

corresponding  detail  from 

the  1862-1866  photo. 


sions,  including  dinner,  to  such  places  as  Nuneham 
and  Godstow,  and  shorter  afternoon  ones  including 
only  tea.  Iffley  would  have  been  a  good  destination 
for  a  shorter  trip.34 

In  May  of  1863,  when  he  was  still  working  on  the 
pictures  for  Alices  Adventures  under  Ground,  there  are 
two  diary  records  of  Dodgson  walking  to  "a  little  be- 
low Iffley"  and  "by  Iffley"  with  the  Liddell  children.35 
Again,  it  seems  at  least  plausible  that  there  were  more 
such  walks  during  the  period  of  the  missing  diaries, 
when  Dodgson  saw  the  Liddell  children  frequently. 

Finally,  in  her  recollections  of  the  wet  trip  to 
Nuneham — recorded,  of  course,  many  years  later — 
Alice  mistakenly  recalled  that  the  cottage  where  they 
took  shelter  was  in  Iffley.  (It  was  actually  in  Sandford, 
and  Dodgson  and  Duckworth  walked  to  Iffley  to  get 
a  fly  to  rescue  the  others.)  This  at  least  suggests  that 
Iffley  was  familiar  territory.36 

Alice  had  turned  ten  on  May  4,  1862,  just  before 
the  boat  trip  to  Iffley  recorded  in  the  diary.  We  don't 
know  her  exact  height,  of  course,  and,  as  the  fictional 
Alice  would  point  out,  it  was  constandy  changing  in 
the  period  when  Wonderland  was  conceived  and  writ- 
ten. But,  by  at  least  one  estimate,  the  average  height 
for  eight-year-old  British  schoolgirls  in  1908-1911  was 
114.9  cm.,  or  3  ft.  9  in.,  while  the  average  for  twelve 
year  olds  was  135.2  cm.,  or  4  ft.  5  in.37  So  it  seems  very 
likely  that  Alice  would  have  been  somewhere  under 
four  feet  tall. 

This  also  seems  to  be  true  of  the  fictional  Alice. 
The  Alice  of  the  book  is  seven  and  a  half  years  old 
in  Through  the  Looking-Glass  and  presumably  seven  in 


Alices  Adventures  in  Wonderland.  In  Tenniel's  illustra- 
tion of  the  door  in  the  hall,  in  Alices  Adventures  in 
Wonderland,  the  still  normal-sized  Alice  is  just  about 
three  times  taller  than  the  15-inch-high  door  behind 
the  curtain  in  the  hall,  or  a  little  below  four  feet.  In- 
terestingly, Dodgson  actually  altered  the  height  of  the 
door  from  Alices  Adventures  under  Ground  to  the  final 
manuscript.  In  Alices  Adventures  under  Ground,  the 
door  is  18  inches  high  and  does  not  appear  in  the  il- 
lustration. So  presumably  he  changed  it  to  make  Alice 
the  right  height  in  the  Tenniel  drawing.  We  know  that 
he  was  extremely  concerned  about  small  details  of  the 
illustrations,  and  in  a  book  where  height  changes  are 
so  central,  getting  the  "normal"  Alice  right  would 
have  been  important. 

This  would  make  both  the  real  and  the  fictional 
Alice  just  the  right  height  to  fit  through  the  four-foot 
opening  in  the  tree  recorded  by  Loudon.  Any  child, 
let  alone  a  particularly  bright  and  imaginative  one, 
would  relish  the  idea  of  walking  through  an  opening 
that  was  just  about  her  size,  into  the  middle  of  a  tree. 

THE   TAUNT   PHOTOGRAPH 

One  might  wonder  if  any  old  hollow  tree  would  look 
like  the  tree  in  Dodgson 's  illustration.  In  fact,  how- 
ever, even  this  very  tree,  150  years  later  (see  Fig.  2), 
doesn't  look  much  like  the  illustration  in  Alice's  Ad- 
ventures under  Ground — the  tree  branches  extend  to 
the  ground,  and  the  hole  has  been  partially  blocked 
up.  The  illustration  is  also  only  vaguely  like  the 
(somewhat  impressionistic)  early  nineteenth-century 
engravings.  A  tree  is  a  living  and  changing  organism, 


22 


however,  so  one  would  want  to  compare  the  illustra- 
tion to  a  contemporaneous  photograph.  Fortunately, 
a  number  of  nineteenth-century  photographs  of  the 
Iffley  Yew  can  be  found  in  the  English  Heritage  Ar- 
chives.38 They  include  several  glass  negative  plates 
taken  by  Henry  Taunt,  a  well-known  local  Oxford 
commercial  photographer.  The  earliest  dated  plate  is 
from  1870  (see  Fig.  5b),  but  there  is  another,  undated 
plate  which  has  to  be  even  earlier  since  several  grave- 
stones that  occur  in  the  1870  picture  are  missing  from 
it  (see  Fig.  5a)  ,39 

In  fact,  since  this  photograph  is  set  in  the  church- 
yard, and,  as  a  large  glass  negative,  has  excellent  de- 
tail, it  is  possible  to  date  it  fairly  precisely  by  examin- 
ing the  gravestone  inscriptions.  Cross-checking  with 
the  Iffley  Parish  Burial  Register  and  the  surviving 
gravestones  in  the  current  churchyard  provides  even 
more  information."'  It's  immediately  apparent  that 
there  is  a  cross  dated  October  1859  in  the  foreground 
of  both  pictures  (circled  in  Fig.  5)  and  a  stone  dated 
October  1866  immediately  behind  it  in  the  1870  pic- 
ture that  is  absent  from  the  earlier  one  (enclosed  in 
a  rectangle  in  Fig.  5).  Both  dates  can  be  confirmed 
in  the  Burial  Register.  So  the  photograph  must  date 
from  the  period  between  1859  and  1866. 

Closer  examination  shows  that  the  gravestone  in 
front  of  the  restored  ancient  cross  in  the  first  picture 
has  been  replaced  by  a  different  stone  in  the  1870 
shot  (enclosed  in  a  rectangle  in  Fig.  5).  The  new 
stone,  which  can  be  read  in  close-up,  still  exists  in  a 
stack  at  the  side  of  the  churchyard  and  commemo- 
rates Martha  Luff,  who  died  in  1866  and — again,  ac- 
cording to  the  Iffley  Parish  Burial  Register — was  bur- 
ied March  8,  1866.  Even  more  detailed  inspection  of 
the  photographs  shows  a  small  cross  off  to  one  side 
near  the  church  in  both  the  earlier  and  later  shot 
(circled  in  Fig.  5).  This  cross,  though  broken,  is  still 
in  the  same  place  and  commemorates  Eliza  Hearne, 
who  died  in  1862  and  was  buried  May  18.  This  means 
that  we  can  date  the  earlier  photograph  to  the  pe- 
riod between  May  18,  1862,  and  March  8,  1866,  just 
the  time  when  Wonderland  was  being  written.  (Cross- 
checking the  Burial  Register  and  the  record  of  extant 
inscriptions  shows  that  this  is  as  precise  a  date  as  we 
are  able  to  get.)" 

Fig.  6  shows  the  detail  from  the  1862-1866  pho- 
tograph that  corresponds  to  the  illustration.  Allowing 
for  the  Pre-Raphaelite  curves  that  Dodgson  applied 
to  the  branches,  and  a  slight  change  of  angle,  they  are 
strikingly  similar.  In  a  later  photograph  from  1885,'- 
as  now,  the  hole  is  blocked  up  with  stones,  but  it  is 
open  in  both  the  1862-1866  and  1870  photographs, 
and,  just  as  Loudon  described  it,  extends  to  the  same 
height  as  the  first  branches. 

In  particular,  if  we  take  the  proportions  given  in 
Loudon's  book,  the  hole  in  the  tree  is  four  feet  tall 
and  equivalently  wide,  extending  from  the  ground  to 


the  point  where  the  branches  start.  In  the  illustration, 
Alice  is  just  under  the  height  of  both  the  tree  branch- 
es and  the  door. 

CONCLUSION 

So  what  do  we  know  with  some  certainty,  and 
what  can  we  infer?  We  can  be  fairly  certain  that  Dodg- 
son knew  about  the  Iffley  Yew,  that  he  visited  Iffley 
twice  in  1857  and  eleven  times  between  1862  and 
1864,  that  he  had  friends,  including  child-friends,  in 
Iffley,  that  he  attended  services  at  the  church  three 
times,  and  that  he  also  visited  the  Rectory  three  times. 
We  can  also  be  fairly  certain  that  he  intended  to  take 
photographs  in  Iffley  Rectory  and  that  he  visited  If- 
fley with  the  Liddell  sisters  twice.  We  can  be  fairly  cer- 
tain that,  in  the  1860s,  the  tree  had  a  hole  that  could 
be  entered,  that  the  hole  was  about  four  feet  high  by 
four  feet  wide  at  maximum  extension,  and  that  the 
tree  strongly  resembled  Dodgson's  illustration.  It  is 
definitely  not  certain  but  is  highly  plausible  that  there 
were  other  unrecorded  visits  to  Iffley  during  the  pe- 
riod of  the  missing  diaries  between  1858  and  1862. 

Putting  this  all  together  leads  to  what  is  undoubt- 
edly an  inference,  but  surely  not  a  wild  or  implausible 
inference.  It  is  an  inference  that  fits  everything  we 
know  about  Dodgson's  genius — both  his  genius  with 
children  and  his  literary  genius — and  about  the  gen- 
eral genius  of  children  themselves.  The  inference  is 
that  the  children  Dodgson  knew,  including  the  Lid- 
dell sisters,  and  Alice  in  particular,  would  have  en- 
joyed the  special  imaginative  child  pleasure  of  find- 
ing a  child-sized,  unlikely  hiding  place  (a  shed,  a 
treehouse,  an  attic,  a  garden  nook).  An  ancient  tree 
with  a  four-foot  doorway  would  certainly  be  seen  as 
curious  and  enchanting  by  every  child  we  know.  The 
further  inference  is  that  Dodgson  would  have  delight- 
edly joined  in  that  imaginative  pleasure.  And  the  still 
further  inference  is  that  Dodgson — though  perhaps 
here  we  should  say  Carroll — would  have  transformed 
that  everyday  bit  of  childish  imaginative  play  into  a 
memorably  strange  and  curious  door,  in  this  most 
memorably  strange  and  curious  of  books. 

1  Sherwood,  Jennifer,  and  Nikolaus  Pevsner  (1974). 
The  Buildings  of  England:  Oxfordshire.  Harmondsworth: 
Penguin  Books,  pp.  658-662. 

2  Loudon,  John  Claudius  (1838).  Arboretum  et  Fructicetum 
Britannicum;  or,  The  Trees  and  Shrubs  of  Britain.  London: 
J.  C.  Loudon,  vol.  4,  p.  2076. 

1    Urban,  Mr.  (1804).  "Stones  in  an  Old  Yew— The 

Kingsland  Doctress,"  The  Gentleman's  Magazine.  London: 

Nov.,  vol.  96,  p.  995. 
1    Iffley  (1818).  The  Oxford  University  and  City  Guide  [&c]  ;  To 

which  is  added,  a  guide  to  Blenheim,  Nuneham  [&c.].  Oxford: 

p.  193. 
:>    Skelton,  Joseph  ( 1823) .  Engraved  Illustrations  of  the 

Principal  Antiquities  of  Oxfordshire.  Oxford:  J.  Skelton, 

Billington  Hundred,  p.  8. 


23 


6  Ingram,  James  (1837).  Memorials  of  Oxford.  Oxford: 
John  Henry  Parker,  vol.  3,  Iffley,  p.  9. 

7  Iffley  Church  ( 1 845 ) .  The  Illustrated  London  News, 
Oct.  25,  p.  261. 

*    Camera  Sketches  (1850).  The  Penny  Illustrated  News, 

Jan.  26,  vol.  1,  no.  14,  p.  112. 
9    Palmer,  Francis  Paul,  and  Alfred  Crowquill  (1846). 
The  Wanderings  of  a  Pen  and  Pencil.  London:  Jeremiah 
How,  p.  288. 

10    Hall,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Samuel  Carter  (1857) .  "The  Book 
of  the  Thames,  from  Its  Rise  to  Its  Fall,"  part  6,  The  Art- 
Journal  London:  June  1,  vol.  3,  p.  190. 

"  Wakeling,  Edward  (2011).  Charles Dodgson  Photographic 
Database,  <www.lewiscarroll-site.com>,  nos.  0096-0099. 

12    Wakeling,  Edward  (ed.)  (1995).  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries:  The 
Private  Journals  of  Charles  Lutwidge  Dodgson,  Vol.  3:  January 
1857-58.  Luton,  Beds.:  The  Lewis  Carroll  Society,  pp. 
48-49,  54.  [Henceforth  referenced  as  Wakeling,  Lewis 
Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  3.] 

IS    Wakeling,  Edward  (ed.)  (1997) .  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries: 
The  Private  Journals  of  Charles  Lutividge  Dodgson,  Vol.  4:  May 
1862  to  September  1864.  Luton,  Beds.:  The  Lewis  Carroll 
Society,  pp.  69,  74,  75-78,  81-82,  87,  88,  161,  176,  196, 
200,  260.  [Henceforth  referenced  as  Wakeling,  Lewis 
Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4.] 

1 '    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  3,  pp.  48-49,  54;  Vol. 
4,  pp.  69,  74,  75-78,  87,  161,  176,  260. 

15    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4,  pp.  74,  81-82,  106. 

"'    England  census,  1861,  Iffley  Parish,  Oxfordshire,  Iffley 
Turn,  registration  district  Headington,  sub-registration 
district  St.  Clement,  class  RG9,  piece  890,  folio  104, 
p.  2,  GSU  roll  542717,  lists  at  no.  9  John  Slatter,  44, 
clergyman  born  in  Iffley,  wife  Elizabeth,  49,  daughter 
Elizabeth  A.,  7,  and  mother  Ann,  75,  and  lists  at  no. 
6  Elizabedi  Romsey  (sic),  35,  a  clergyman's  wife,  son 
John  T.  M.,  6,  daughters  Elizabeth  F.  C,  3,  and  Mary 
H.,  1;  England  census,  1861,  Iffley  Parish,  Oxfordshire, 
Iffley  village,  reg.  district  Headington,  sub-reg.  district 
St.  Clement  class  RG9,  piece  890,  folio  112,  p.  17,  GSU  r. 
542717,  lists  at  no.  88  Acton  Warburton,  47,  Perpetual 
Curate  of  Iffley,  and  mother  Anna,  77;  England  census, 
1861,  St.  Mary  the  Virgin  Parish,  Oxfordshire,  St.  Mary 
Hall,  reg.  district  Oxford,  sub-reg.  district  Oxford,  class 
RG9,  piece  893,  folio  73,  p.  34,  GSU  r.  542717,  lists  at  no. 
181  James  Rumsey,  37,  a  clergyman.  The  1861  census 
was  enumerated  Apr.  7,  1861,  widi  information  stated 
as  of  that  date.  All  images  of  the  census  online  at 
<Ancestry.com>. 

17  Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4,  p.  72,  in  a  note 
by  Wakeling;  John  Slatter  signed  the  Sandford  Parish 
Register  from  July  4,  1852,  through  December  15,  1861, 
with  W.  H.  Ranken  succeeding  him  (Family  History 
Library,  Salt  Lake  City,  microfilm  952330). 

18  Cohen,  M.  (ed.)  (1979).  The  Utters  of  Lewis  Carroll. 
London:  Macmillan,  p.  46. 

19  Wakeling,  Edward  (2011).  Charles  Dodgson  Photographic 
Database,  <www.lewiscarroll-site.com>,  nos.  0582,  0583, 
0736,  estimates  1862. 

211    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4,  pp.  102,  135, 
185,  295;  Slatter  signed  the  Streatley  Parish  Register 
from  January  9,  1862,  to  March  28,  1880  (Family  Historv 
Library,  Salt  Lake  City,  microfilm  1040688). 


21    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  3,  p.  54,  Vol.  4,  pp. 

74,76-78,87,  103,  176. 
-'-'    Tyack,  Geoffrey  (2003) .  "The  Restoration  of  Iffley  Parish 

Church,"  Oxoniensia,  vol.  68,  pp.  114—130. 
2:1    Proceedings  of  the  Oxford  Society  for  Promoting  the  Study  of 

Gothic  Architecture.  Oxford:  Oxford  University,  pp.  6,  10, 

12,  18,25,70. 

24  Tyack,  Geoffrey  (2003) .  "The  Restoration  of  Iffley  Parish 
Church,"  Oxoniensia,  vol.  68,  pp.  114—130. 

25  Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  3,  p.  54. 

211    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4,  pp.  76-78,  87. 

27    Wakeling,  Edward  (2011).  Charles  Dodgson  Photographic 

Database,  <www.lewiscarroll-site.com>,  no.  0785. 
'    Birth  certificate,  General  Register  Office,  registration 
district  Heading  Union,  sub-district  St.  Clement, 
Elizabeth  Frances  Cornelia,  born  Aug.  22,  1857,  Iffley, 
Oxfordshire,  father  James  Rumsey,  clergyman,  mother 
Eliza  Rumsey  formerly  Medlycoth  [sic,  should  be 
Medlycott],  registered  Sept.  28,  1857. 

29    Taylor,  Roger,  and  Edward  Wakeling  (2003) .  Lewis  Carroll- 
Photographer.  Princeton:  Princeton  University  Press. 

90    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4,  p.  103.  In  a  note, 
Wakeling  states  that  Dodgson  discovered  on  July  22  that 
several  of  his  dates,  including  this  one,  were  off  by  one, 
and  that  Dodgson  then  corrected  them;  the  20th  here 
was  corrected  to  the  21st. 

sl    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4,  pp.  177-181. 

32    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4,  p.  69,  with  a  note 
by  Wakeling. 

93    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4,  pp.  81-82,  94-95. 

M    Cohen,  Morton  (ed.)  (1989).  Interviews  and  Recollections: 
Lewis  Carroll  pp.  84-86. 

85    Wakeling,  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  Vol.  4,  pp.  196,  200. 

36    Cohen,  Morton  (ed.)  (1989) .  Interviews  and  Recollections: 
Lewis  Carroll  p.  86. 

S7    Hatton,  Timothy  J.,  and  Richard  M.  Martin  (2009). 

"Fertility  Decline  and  the  Heights  of  Children  in  Britain, 
1886-1938,"  IZA  Discussion  Papers  4306,  Institute  for  the 
Study  of  Labor  (IZA). 

:w  English  Heritage  Archives,  <www.englishheritagearchives. 
org.uk>,  reference  no.  BB57/01327,  dated  1860-1922, 
and  CC54/00378,  dated  1870.  Examining  the  stones  in 
the  1870  photograph  confirms  the  date. 

,9    The  gravestones  marked  with  rectangles  in  the  1870 
photograph  were  used  to  establish  an  upper  bound  on 
the  date  of  the  earlier  photograph,  and  those  marked 
with  ovals  the  lower  bound.  The  tall  cross  next  to  the  Yew 
was  restored  in  1857  (cf.  Fig.  3  and  Fig.  4). 

10  Oxfordshire  Parish  Register  Transcripts,  Headington  Reg. 
District,  Vol.  1,  Iffley  Burials,  1572-1986,  Oxfordshire 
Family  History  Society,  compact  disc  OXF-HED01. 

11  Monumental  Inscription  Transcript,  Iffley,  St.  Mary  the 
Virgin  Parish  Church,  Oxfordshire  Family  History  Society, 
compact  disc  OXF-MMFF. 

12  English  Heritage  Archives,  <www.englishheritagearchives. 
org.uk>,  reference  no.  CC54/00379  dated  1885. 
Examining  the  gravestones  in  the  photograph  confirms 
the  date. 


24 


-^ 


~^s 


^ 


The  Huntinc?  of  Alice  in  SeV<hi  Pits 


ADRIANA  PELIANO 


^* 


*~ 


1.    RIVER 

Alice  was  raised  on  a  ship  of  dreams,  in  a  liquid  look- 
ing-glass, following  the  currents  of  desire,  imagina- 
tion, and  curiosity.  She  was  born  on  a  river,  with  its 
switchbacks  and  reflections,  following  and  fighting 
the  flow,  in  the  geometry  of  laughter  and  strange  par- 
adoxes. We  do  not  read  a  book;  we  dive  into  it.  It  surrounds 
us,  constantly.1  Sitting  on  the  bank,  Alice  would  ask 
herself:  and  luhat  is  the  use  of  a  book  without  pictures  and 
conversations?  Alice  has  been  perhaps  the  most  illus- 
trated book  of  all  time.  This  shows  that  we  continue 
to  answer  the  question  that  Alice  did  not  ask:  and  what 
is  the  use  of  a  book  with  pictures  and  conversations? 

A  river  child,  Alice  moves  amongst  mazes  where 
one  is  lost  and  found  in  mysterious  rhythms.  The 
great  paradox  running  through  Alice's  adventures, 
according  to  Deleuze,2  is  the  loss  of  her  own  name, 
her  infinite  identity,  her  eternal  becoming.  When  the 
caterpillar  asks,  Who  are  you?  Alice  does  not  know  the 
answer.  /  know  who  I  was  . . .  but  I  think  I  must  have  been 
changed  several  times  since  then.  In  her  typically  paradox- 
ical manner,  Alice  says  no,  but  also  says  yes:  I  know 
who  I  am;  the  transformation  continues.  Like  Alice, 
when  it  seems  we  know  who  we  are,  we're  already 
someone  else,  and  what  we  think  we  are,  is  what  we 
once  were.  And  the  world  that  we  know  is  changing 
every  second.  The  girl,  born  into  the  River  of  Heracli- 
tus,  knows  that  being  and  nonbeing  are  in  constant 
conversation,  in  an  eternal  cycle  that  is  being 
created  at  all  times. 

When    Alice    says    that   she    only 
knows  who  she  was,  she  is  saying  that 
we  are  always  in  motion.  And  when  she 
was  drawn  by  John  Tenniel  in  Victorian 
England,  a  tradition  of  Alices  was  born 
that  would  follow  in  this  path.:i  But 


Alice  is  no  longer  the  Victorian  Al-       j/&   *jj; 
ice,  instead  she  is  a  living  kaleido- 
scope of  all  of  the  possibilities. '  How 
many  artists  were  in  fact  driven  by  the 
need  to  overcome  the  stereotypical  imagery  of  the 
girl  and  her  amazing  world,  and  by  the  quest  for 
new  adventures  in  expression?  Instead  of  the  ques- 
tion "Who  is  Alice?"  there  are  now  paths  leading 
to  that  which  Alice  might  come  to  be.  . . . 

Adriana 


As  the  twentieth  century  progressed,  the  concept 
of  illustration  underwent  profound  transformations, 
in  dialogue  with  the  radical  changes  happening  in  the 
visual  arts.  Artists  broke  down  the  barriers  between 
the  outside  world  and  the  experiences  of  the  mind, 
questioning  the  idea  of  a  mimetic  approach  to  illus- 
tration. The  transformations  in  the  universe  of  the 
arts  and  counterculture  were  re-creating  Alice's  expe- 
riences in  the  melee  of  her  dream  world  and  wonder- 
land. At  the  end  of  that  century,  Alice's  looking-glass 
shattered  into  a  million  pieces,  spreading  within  the 
collective  imagination  new  meta-Alices  in  a  nonsensi- 
cal, magical  hourglass  of  alicinations. 

The  artists  and  illustrators  were  driven  to  discov- 
er or  invent  new  relationships  between  text  and  pic- 
tures. The  identity  of  the  subject  was  subverted  by  the 
allure  of  the  unknown  and  inexplicable.  Rather  than 
repeat,  illustrators  started  to  provoke  and  transgress. 
They  questioned  the  classic  idea  that  art  should  imi- 
tate or  interpret  an  exterior  reality.  They  also  began 
to  seek  out  subversion,  paradox,  and  experimenta- 
tion.5 The  present  time  is  filled  with  otherness  and 
difference.  Intertextual  readings,  metalanguage,  mul- 
tiple assemblies,  nonlinear  narratives.  Abracadabra! 

Since  the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  each  de- 
cade, through  its  different  visions  and  styles,  created 
its  own  Alices:  art  nouveau,  art  deco,  sur- 
realist, pop,  psychedelic,  futuristic,  Gothic, 
naive,  ethnic,  dark,  steampunk,  pop 
surrealist.1'  Alice  is,  by  turns,  a  sweet 
and  ingenuous  girl,  a  questioning 
feminist,  a  perverted  child,  a  mad 
and  bloody  assassin,  a  drugged  adult, 
seeker  of  worlds  beyond  conscious 
thought,  a  delirious  psychedelicist,  or 
an  armor-clad  and  shielded  warrior, 
always  multiple  and  mutating. 

Alice  moves  beyond  illustration 
into  art,  into  movies,  into  fashion, 
into  animation,  into  games,  into  com- 
ics, into  the  mix  that  now  reigns  and  requires 
other  comprehensions.  And  they  all  coexist  in 
our  alicinatory  times  of  mixtures  and  count- 
less seams  and  transitions  through  multiple 
networks.  I  do  not  know  of  another  girl  with 
so  many  faces,  a  traveler  from  an  imaginary 


Peliano 


25 


Elena  Kalis 


Polixeni  Papapetrou 

world,  bringing  with  her  the  paradoxes  that  defy  our 
senses  and  our  common  sense.  The  Alice  books  do  not 
fit  into  any  mold  or  explanation,  instead  spreading  a 
worldwide  net  of  creative  possibilities. 

We  live  in  an  image  culture  of  collage  and  montage,  of 
velocity  and  voraciousness:  one  image  quickly  devours  an- 
other, transforming  into  another  image,  ready  to  be  devoured, 
Norval  Baitello  explains.  Images  seduce  and  absorb 
us,  but  with  the  loss  of  our  ability  to  create  consistent 
connections  and  sensible  relations,  the  devouring 
process  is  reversed:  We  go  from  indiscriminately  de- 
vouring images  to  being  indiscriminately  devoured  by 
them.  We  lose  ourselves  in  labyrinthine  deserts,  and 
instead  of  always  seeing  the  otherness  in  that  which 


is  the  same,  different  Alices  upon  each  reading,  we 
find  ourselves  mired  in  the  sad  adventure  of  always 
seeing  sameness  in  the  other;  we  see  nothing  new  in 
the  thousands  of  Alices  in  circulation.  Decipher  me 
or  I  will  devour  you.7 

The  story  of  Alice  is  already  so  well  known  that 
it  becomes  fragmented,  repeated,  displaced,  decon- 
structed, gnawed  upon  by  artists  from  everywhere,  in 
every  way.  With  her  serpentine  neck,  Alice  navigates 
among  hybrid  identities,  blends,  contrasts,  oddities, 
merchandise,  gato  por  lebre,s  and  senselessness  that 
everybody  buys  and  believes  without  understanding 
why.  She  sets  out  for  the  new  and  looks  back  to  rein- 
vent herself  all  over  again.  This  is  Alice.  Alice  is  all  of 
them  and  none  of  them,  and  she  opens  herself  up  like 
the  largest  kaleidoscope  ever  seen.  Good-bye,  feet! 

Alice  strolls  along  the  margins  and  between  the 
lines;  she  crosses  borders,  a  traveler  through  the  un- 
known, but  also  through  stock  phrases,  cliches,  the 
commonplace,  distortions  and  cheap  simplifications 
that  insist  on  impoverishing  life  and  art.  As  we  travel 
through  Alice's  landscapes,  we  also  travel  through 
our  own  interior  landscapes.  New  Alices  learn  that  a 
path  has  not  been  set;  rather,  it  opens  as  one  goes 
forward.51 

Alice  is  an  invitation  to  duplicity  (for  this  curious 
child  was  very  fond  of  pretending  to  be  two  people),  multi- 
plicity {she  began  thinking  over  all  the  children  she  knew 
that  were  of  the  same  age  as  herself,  to  see  if  she  could  have 
been  changed  for  any  of  them),  becoming  (/  know  who  I 
was,  but  I  think  I  must  have  been  changed  several  times  since 
then),  and  the  loss  of  one's  own  name  ( This  must  be  the 
wood  ivhere  things  have  no  names.  I  wonder  what'll  become 
of  MY  name  when  I  go  in?).  We  must  create  new  forms 
of  expression  to  give  way  to  new  Alices  more  sensitive 
to  these  subtle  and  free  becomings  .  .  . 

McLuhan  understood  that  Lewis  Carroll  peered 
into  the  looking-glass  and  saw  the  time  and  space  of 
the  electronic  man.  Before  Einstein,  Carroll  had  al- 
ready penetrated  the  ultrasophisticated  universe  of 
relativity.  Every  moment  in  Alice  has  its  own  time  and 
space.  And  the  fragmentation  of  time  into  a  multi- 
tude of  small  fractions  of  the  present  joins  with  the 
fragmentation  of  space  into  a  multicolored,  trans- 
figured kaleidoscope.10  Pieces  of  Alices  from  around 
the  world  give  themselves  over  to  the  tasks  of  living, 
eating,  drinking;  they  become  involved  in  an  endless 
party  and  its  infinite  possibilities. 

Why  continue  living  as  Alice  seated  at  the  table 
set  for  tea,  sullen  and  silent,  as  depicted  by  Tenniel? 
What  we  now  seek  is  a  way  to  remain  time's  friends  (as 
the  Hatter  suggests)  and  to  free  ourselves  from  the 
senseless  and  repetitive  rituals  in  which  the  guests  at 
the  tea  party  find  themselves  trapped.  It  is  an  invita- 
tion to  new  Alices — nomadic,  mutating  Alices,  mul- 
tiple and  simultaneous.  Marcel  Duchamp  was  "con- 
vinced that,  like  Alice  in  Wonderland,  [tomorrow's 


26 


artists]  will  be  led  to  pass  through  the  looking-glass 
of  the  retina,  to  reach  a  more  profound  expression."11 

2. UNDERGROUND 

In  Carroll's  own  illustrations  from  the  Under  Ground 
manuscript,  Alice  is  spontaneous  and  spiritual,  but 
also  anguished  and  melancholic,  close  to  the  ideal- 
ized image  of  the  artist's  soul.  She  echoes  romantic 
myths  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites  and  their  languid  femi- 
nine figures,  with  oblique  gazes  and  overflowing  locks 
that  would  enchant  the  surrealists.  She  seems  closer 
to  a  magical  world  than  a  logical  one.  At  the  same 
time,  we  glimpse  hybrid  and  mythamorphic  creatures 
in  the  book  that  invoke  the  grotesque  beings  of  Hi- 
eronymus  Bosch.  Are  these  drawings  not  among  the 
precursors  of  the  surrealist  bestiaries,  a  mix  of  dream 
worlds  and  fabulous  monsters? 

But  when  the  expanded  work  was  published  in 
London,  it  was  illustrated  by  John  Tenniel,  a  famous 
illustrator  from  the  Victorian  periodical  Punch.  A 
commonly  held  belief  remains  that  rarely  was  an 
author  as  well  served  by  an  illustrator  as  was  Lewis 
Carroll  by  John  Tenniel,  even  though  the  work  has 
been  illustrated  subsequently  by  thousands  of  artists 
throughout  the  world. 

We  still  confuse  the  images  and  the  text,  which 
together  seem  to  tell  the  same  story.  We  often  lose 
sight  of  whether  the  images  are  in  fact  faithful  to  the 
text  or  whether  we  create,  from  them,  a  new  text.  Is  fi- 
delity possible  among  images  and  texts  of  these  Alices} 
Does  Tenniel's  Alice  remain  the  most  perfect  illustra- 
tion of  the  work  for  the  contemporary  eye? 

Who  passively  defies  the  Queen,  with  her  arms 
crossed?  Who  confronts  a  mad  cat,  in  search  of  new 
directions,  with  her  hands  behind  her  back? 

If  I  empathetically  project  myself  onto  Tenniel's 
Alices,  I  feel  like  a  tamed  and  contained  Victorian  girl 
who  would  not  dirty  her  dress,  would  not  throw  her- 
self into  the  well,  would  not  unfold  herself  into  a  ser- 
pent to  discover  its  dangers,  would  not  think  of  eating 
bats.  (These  Alices,  who  are  in  the  text,  do  not  appear 
in  Tenniel's  pictures.)  Tenniel's  Alice  doesn't  change, 
and  awakens  at  the  end  of  the  book  essentially  the 
same.  Really? 

Alice  is  not  transformed;  Alice  is  transformation. 
How  many  adventures  might  she  still  experience,  how 
many  paths  would  she  choose,  how  many  Alices  might 
still  come  into  being?  If  life  is  a  dream,  Alice  is  unable 
to  wake  up;  instead,  she  aiuakens.  I  am  talking  not  only 
about  what  was  written,  but  also  about  understand- 
ing that  we  ourselves  are  different  with  every  reading, 
and  that  new  Alices  are  born  within  us.  Alice  extends 
beyond  the  borders  of  the  book  and  will  live  a  multi- 
tude of  adventures  among  constellations  of  dreams, 
thoughts,  and  emotions. 

Tenniel's  Alice  sits  sulking  at  the  table  where  tea 
is  served,  without  free  will.  Similarly,  all  those  who 


insist  on  reproducing  the  commonplace  formulas  re- 
main trapped  in  a  repetitive  tea-time  ritual.  Many  of 
today's  Alices  unfold  in  new  manners  of  expression 
and  pictures,  awakening  in  different  arts,  taking  on  a 
life  of  their  own  in  a  multitude  of  cultures.  Consider- 
ing these  friends  from  modern  times,  what  Alices  are 
we  capable  of? 

Through  readings  and  re-readings,  I  have  select- 
ed artists  in  seven  groups,  in  which  I  seek  out: 

Enigmatic  Alices  that  destabilize  the  common- 
place and  suggest  new  readings:  Alain  Gauthier,12 
Dusan  Kallay,13  Jonathan  Miller,14  Martin  Ba- 
rooshian,13  Nicole  Claveloux,16  and  Unsuk  Chin.17 

Metalinguistic  Alices  that  reflect  on  language 
and  expression  and  challenge  the  standards  of 
representational  art:  Abelardo  Morell,18  Anthony 
Browne,19  Catherine  Anne  Hiley,20John  Vernon 
Lord,21  Ralph  Steadman,22  and  Suzy  Lee.23 

Conceptual  Alices  that  inhabit  labyrinths  and 
paradoxes:  Randy  Greif,24  Iassen  Ghiuselev,25 
Julia  Gukova,26  Luiz  Zerbini,27  Oleg  Lipchenko,28 
and  Sergey  Tyukanov.29 

Alices  that  cross  intertextual  borders  and  visit 
characters  from  other  stories:  John  Rae,  Dorothy 
Furness,  and  Edward  Bloomfield.30 

Alices  of  metamorphic  bodies  challenging 
hybrid  identities  and  erotic  dreams:  Arlindo 
Daibert,31  Kuniyoshi  Kaneko,32  Nicoletta  Cec- 
coli,33  Tania  Ianovskaia,34  Tanya  Miller,35  and 
Vince  Collins.36 

Alices  that  journey  through  the  world  of  dreams 
and  the  marvelous,  proposing  magical  games: 
DeLoss  McGraw,37  Elena  Kalis,38  Kokusyoku  Sum- 
ire,39  Maggie  Taylor,40  Phoebe  in  Wonderland,^  and 
Alice-themed  tea  houses  in  Tokyo. 

Some  Alices  that  journey  through  leftover  night- 
mares and  challenge  the  frontiers  between  the 
mind  and  the  unconscious:  American  McGee,42 
Anna  Gaskell,43  Camille  Rose  Garcia,44  Alice  in 
the  Undenuorld  (Dark  Marchen  Show),45  Trevor 
Brown,46  and  Jan  Svankmajer.47 

Alice  is  Alices  is  Alice. 

3.    MARVELOUS 

Let  us  now  journey  through  time  with  Alice  herself 
as  our  guide  on  her  adventures  in  being  depicted  by 
artists  other  than  Tenniel. 

Alice  became  lost  in  imaginary  labyrinths  until 
she  arrived  at  the  Gradiva  art  gallery,  created  by  An- 
dre Breton  in  1937.  She  saw  the  name  Alice  above  the 
door,  among  other  surrealist  muses.  She  then  read  a 
passage  from  the  gallery's  pamphlet: 

From  the  book  of  children 's  images  to  the  book  of  po- 
etic images.™ 


27 


Salvador  Dali 


Surrealism  had  transported  the  Victorian  girl  to  the 
book  of  poetic  images.  That  was  when  she  saw  a  grin 
hovering  in  the  air  that  said  Alice's  adventures  down  the 
rabbit  hole  or  through  the  looking-glass  encourage  us  to  seek 
out  other  cracks  leading  to  the  marvelous.49 

Lewis  Carroll  left  the  doorway  to  our  dreams 
open  a  crack.  Alice  went  through  it  and  found  herself 
in  a  labyrinth  of  mirrors,  an  endless  game,  projections 
of  herself  created  by  surrealist  artists.  Surrealist  muse, 
sphinx,  femme  enfant,  Alice  unfolds  into  multiple  vi- 
sions of  a  modern  myth.  She  enters  portals  to  the 
unknown,  plumbing  the  depths  of  the  unconscious, 
rites  of  passage;  the  revelation  of  a  sibylline  and  ar- 
chaic female,  she  becomes  mixed  with  landscapes  of 
a  world  in  ruins,  in  the  echoes  and  phantasms  of  the 
nightmares  of  war  and  of  the  dawning  of  a  new  world. 

Carroll  was  broadly  shared  by  the  surrealists.  He 
was  read,  and  often  invoked,  by  Paul  Eluard,  Gisele 
and  Mario  Prassinos,  Guy  Levis  Mano,  Max  Ernst, 
Dorothea  Tanning,  Leonora  Carrington,  Henri  Pari- 
sot,  Frederic  Delanglade,  Henri  Toyen,  Rene  Mag- 
ritte,  and  Salvador  Dali,  among  others.  Max  Ernst 
would  illustrate  some  of  his  words,  and  confess  that 
he  was  his  second  favorite  writer  after  Lautreamont.50 

Continuing  her  journey,  Alice  entered  a  portal 
and  was  taken  aback  by  a  series  of  prints  and  illustra- 
tions by  Salvador  Dali  that  depicted  her  adventures  in 
Wonderland  (Maecenas,  1969).  She  became  a  myste- 
rious figure  jumping  rope  through  a  landscape  filled 
with  Dali's  obsessions,  such  as  the  melting  clocks  of 
the  Persistence  of  Memory  series.  The  clock  became 
the  Hatter's  table,  set  for  tea,  with  time  madly  stopped 
at  six  in  the  afternoon.  If  the  clocks  reveal  the  me- 


chanics of  measuring  linear  time,  the  melting  clocks 
refer  to  relative  time  and  the  universes  of  memory 
and  pleasure. 

Dali  simulated  delirium,  speculating  on  the  pro- 
priety of  the  uninterrupted  becoming  of  every  object 
upon  which  he  carried  out  his  paranoid  activity.  Dali's 
counterfeit  paranoia,  the  "paranoiac-critical  meth- 
od," allowed  him  to  reorder  the  world  according  to 
his  inner  obsessions.  The  limits  between  the  real  and 
the  imagined  became  ambiguous.  And  his  paintings 
began  to  represent  a  space  in  which  everything  that 
can  be  seen  is  potentially  something  else.  Wonder, 
dreams,  and  the  unconscious  serve  as  the  stages  for 
metamorphoses,  where  the  objects,  symbols  of  irra- 
tional desires,  are  subjected  to  sudden  mutations,  an 
uninterrupted  becoming.  Clocks,  mushrooms,  cater- 
pillars, butterflies,  cards,  not  letters —  these  shapes 
are  constantly  being  diluted,  blending  and  transform- 
ing. Wanderer  in  a  dream  world,  Alice  is  stunned  to 
discover  that  everything  is  in  a  constant  creative  flux. 

The  constant  presence  of  Alice's  shadow  in  all 
of  Dali's  images  refers  to  the  Romantic  dilemma  of 
the  double  identity,  suggesting  a  loss  of  bodily  iden- 
tity. In  Dali,  Alice  was  a  faceless  silhouette,  a  mirror  of 
herself  in  shadow  and  reflection.  Surrealist  Alices  are 
bodies  in  metamorphosis  and  becoming,  in  a  space 
of  dreams  and  wonder.  Dali's  Alice  gives  way  to  the 
ghostly  and  kaleidoscopic  presence  of  a  multitude  of 
double  Alices,  nameless  in  the  contemporary  imagina- 
tion. Dali's  Alice  opens  doors  to  new  Alices,  who  ask 
new  questions  of  the  smile  in  the  air — without  Dali. 

4.    FABULOUS   MONSTERS 

Alice  went  to  visit  the  Czech  surrealist  Jan  Svankmajer, 
who  illustrated  the  two  Alice  books  in  two  rare  and 
strange  Japanese  editions.'1  His  drawings  went  be- 
yond the  limits  of  conventional  illustrations,  creating 
unexpected  relationships  between  pictures  and  con- 
versations. They  are  collages  that  reinvent  the  world 
imagined  by  Lewis  Carroll,  proposing  new  mysteries 
and  paradoxes  along  a  surrealist  journey. 

Metamorphosis  in  surrealism  became  a  violent 
and  animalistic  need,  straining  the  limits  of  human 
nature.  Life  is  a  dream.  The  surrealist  monsters 
showed  Alice  that  subjectivity  was  not  that  safe  and 
stable  place  that  she  had  been  made  to  believe.  Al- 
ice found  herself  inserted  into  an  imaginary  jungle  of 
sphinxes  and  chimeras,  among  collages  with  multiple 
identities  that  emerged  from  subterranean,  strange, 
and  archaic  worlds.  The  drawings  were  mounted  and 
dismounted,  metamorphosing  between  images  of  bi- 
ology and  botany,  dolls,  Victorian  illustrations,  and 
sex  symbols — double,  multiple  becomings. 

In  the  "Jabberwocky"'s  portmanteau  words,  there 
was  a  bestiary  of  beings  such  as  tones  and  mome  raths. 
Word  collages  were  turned  by  Svankmajer  into  mon- 
ster collages,  hybrid  and  enigmatic  beings.  Alice's 


28 


body  was  unstable  and  mutating,  a  puzzle  without 
any  right  answer.  Alice  is  a  portmanteau  of  impossi- 
bilities. When  the  caterpillar  asks  Alice,  Who  are  you?, 
Svankmajer's  Alice  is  a  drawing,  a  doll,  a  mushroom, 
lace,  texture,  pulse.  The  caterpillar  and  Alice  meet 
with  a  vital  elan,  filled  with  the  power  of  becoming. 

Alice  continued  along  and  watched  fragments 
of  Svankmajer's  experimental  animated  film  that  re- 
vealed unsuspected  dimensions  of  herself.  Much  of 
the  animation  was  created  through  an  explosive  mix- 
ture of  stop  motion  and  a  wide  variety  of  surreal  ob- 
jects and  hybrid,  bizarre  bodies.  The  characters  might 
be  played  by  machines,  socks,  clay,  antique  dolls  and 
toys,  meat,  and  even  skeletons  and  the  remains  of 
bodies  used  in  taxidermy  experiments.  The  settings 
were  ruins:  decadent,  subterranean  landscapes,  trans- 
formed into  a  somber  and  dissolute  atmosphere. 

Svankmajer  adapted  Carroll's  story  according  to 
a  personal  dialogue  with  the  dream  world  and  his  own 
childhood:  a  world  inhabited  by  desires,  latent  sexual- 
ity, fears,  anxieties,  mysteries  and  obsessions.  We  are 
also  confronted  with  our  own  childhood,  our  own  Al- 
ices, fears,  and  shadows:  inner  alchemies.  Each  time 
we  watch  the  film,  we  dream  anew  and  Alice  becomes 
a  different  one,  among  silences  and  whispers.  I  am 
reminded  of  the  letter  Paulo  Mendes  Campos  gave 
to  his  daughter,  Maria  de  Graca,  when  she  turned  fif- 
teen and  received  Alice  as  a  present:  This  book  is  crazy, 
Maria,  the  meaning  is  inside  of  you.52 

5.    MERCHANDISE 

Alice  looked  at  her  reflection  in  the  water  of  the 
river,  and  it  transformed  into  the  silly,  naive  girl  in 
a  blue  apron  known  by  many,  for  many  years,  as  the 
"real"  Alice.  Her  story,  recreated  in  a  cartoon  by  Walt 
Disney's  dream  factory,  would  become  powerful,  di- 
luting the  collective  imagination,  and  stunting  the 
metamorphoses  of  the  girl  who  was  constantly  in 
transformation.  Inspired  by  Tenniel's  original  illus- 
trations, this  Alice  would  turn  into  the  new  ultimate 
icon,  imposing  for  a  long  time  a  fixed  and  hegemonic 
public  identity  on  the  girl  of  many  faces. 

In  the  cartoon,  Alice  laments  the  fact  that  non- 
sense has  been  converted  into  moral  lessons  and  good 
behavior.  Like  Walt  Disney's  princesses,  the  cartoon 
Alice  is  a  passive  and  defenseless  young  woman  facing 
a  crazy,  senseless  world.  Wonderland  showed  insanity 
to  her  so  that  she  might  desire  sanity  even  more.  It 
showed  misfits,  so  that  she  might  want  to  fit  in.  The 
characters  showed  her  how  the  system  worked,  so  that 
she  could  learn  to  integrate  herself  into  it,  toe  the 
line,  and  assume  her  role  in  society. 

Alice  realized  that  Disney's  cartoon  simultane- 
ously brought  her  story  to  the  world  and  hid  her  criti- 
cal and  subversive  potential.  But  at  the  same  time, 
Disney's  movie  became  a  countercultural  and  psyche- 
delic icon  in  the  1960s  as  an  ode  to  surrealism,  insan- 


ity, and  creativity.  Alice  was  curious  to  see  how  each 
work  remained  open  to  multiple,  contradictory,  and 
oftentimes  paradoxical  readings. 

Alice  discovered  that  many  years  later,  at  the  start 
of  the  twenty-first  century,  Disney  would  produce  an- 
other film  about  her,  this  time  directed  by  a  dark  and 
imaginative  director  named  Tim  Burton.  In  this  film, 
after  many  years,  Alice  returns  to  "Underland"  in  or- 
der to  defeat  the  terrible  dragon,  the  Jabberwocky 
(sic),  as  had  been  foreseen  in  a  prophecy.  Everyone 
asks  her:  Are  you  the  real  Alice? 

She  decides  that  she  is  not.  In  this  movie,  the 
nonsense  is  contained  within  reductionist  formulas 
of  a  hero's  journey.  Alice  is  expected  to  become  a 
warrior,  to  defeat  and  destroy  the  enemy  in  a  Mani- 
chean  world,  to  kill  the  dragon  in  order  to  awaken 
and  assume  her  colonizing  role  in  England's  world 
domination.  Alice  takes  over  her  father's  project  of 
conquering  China. 

The  real  me,  Alice  thought,  is  not  a  warrior,  but 
an  explorer.  She  does  not  kill  the  enemy,  but  learns 
through  him.  She  does  not  want  to  take  over  the 
world,  but  instead  comes  to  know  herself.  For  her, 
Wonderland  is  not  a  batdefield,  but  a  voyage,  a  game, 
a  garden,  and  an  adventure.  That  is  why  this  movie 
is  so  unbearable,  Alice  thought.  Because  it  shows  the 
nightmare  and  the  insanity  that  we  now  inhabit. 

Once  more,  thanks  to  Tim  Burton  and  Disney, 
with  their  considerable  investment  in  promoting 
the  film,  Alice's  presence  in  the  collective  imagina- 
tion was  strengthened  in  an  unprecedented  manner. 
This  is  not  only  because  of  what  the  film  shows,  but 


Jan  Svankmajer 


29 


Kokusyoku  Sumire 

because  of  what  it  stimulates.  Even  with  the  insistent 
repetition  of  symbols  of  consumption,  possibilities 
for  new  becomings  and  friendships  are  reborn  over 
time.  Countless  creative  and  existentialist  possibilities 
might  arise  from  among  both  those  pleased  and  dis- 
pleased with  the  film.  The  film  offered  them  a  chance 
to  reread  the  book,  to  discover  other  images,  other 
means  of  expression,  other  voyages;  to  produce,  to 
create,  to  feel,  to  discover,  and  ultimately  dialogue 
with  and  embark  on  an  adventure,  each  in  his  or  her 
own  way,  in  this  exciting  world  that  still  challenges  us 
to  take  the  plunge. 

6.    ARISU 

The  first  time  I  read  Alice,  I  imagined  myself  falling 
down  with  her  until  we  reached  the  other  side  of  the 
world,  where  people  lived  upside  down.  For  a  child  in 
Brazil,  this  meant  Japan.  Many  years  later,  I  find  that 
Japan  is  home  to  some  of  the  most  stimulating  Alices 
alive  today,  in  ordinary  life  in  the  city  of  Tokyo,  shar- 
ing dreams,  creating  new  worlds.  Girls  and  boys  who 
are  children  and  adults  at  the  same  time  dress  as  Vic- 
torian dolls,  reinventing  John  Tenniel's  illustrations, 
among  other  passions  and  pursuits.  With  gestures, 
mannerisms,  aprons,  lace,  socks,  ties,  and  ruffles,  Al- 
ice is  becoming  a  new  way  of  living  the  countercul- 
ture in  alicinatory  neighborhoods  such  as  Harajuku, 
Shinjuku,  and  Akihabara,  places  where  otherness  and 
altered-ness  are  celebrated,  embracing  the  wonder 
within  the  contemporary  cartography,  journeying 
through  time  and  the  invention  of  oneself. 

The  birth  of  the  Gosu-rori  (Gothic  Lolita)  culture 
coincided  with  the  translation  of  Fushigi  no  kuni  no 
arisu  by  Sumiko  Yagawa,  as  Sean  Somers  showed  me 
in  his  thought-provoking  article  "Arisu  in  harajuku."' 


She  is  my  white  rabbit,  leading  me  to  this  surprising, 
and  in  large  part  misunderstood,  reality.  Yagawa  stim- 
ulated the  blooming  of  a  counterculture  that  frees 
the  imagination  from  repressive  and  repetitive  social 
routines,  opening  the  possibility  of  new  friendships 
with  time. 

Wonderland  (Fushigi)  reveals  an  atmosphere  of 
sensations,  including  charm  and  wonder,  but  also 
mystery,  strangeness,  and  fear.  Fushigi  no  kuni  no  arisu 
was  translated  in  order  to  penetrate  the  existential 
needs  of  a  generation,  particularly  the  marginalized 
and  outcast  youth,  who  could,  in  this  way,  face  mal- 
aise, depression,  violence,  and  rejection  through  the 
wonder  manifested  in  everyday  life. 

Fushigi  is  not  an  inducement  of  daydreams  or 
escapism,  Somers  points  out,  but  a  creative  therapy 
and  an  "alchemy  of  metamorphoses,"  a  subversion  of 
the  standards  for  women,  breaking  down  barriers  be- 
tween ugly  and  beautiful,  sweet  and  perverse,  violent 
and  delicate.  Lolitas  seek  to  prolong  their  childhood 
and  question  dominant  culture  in  a  childish  manner 
and  a  dollish  pose,  in  a  game  of  being  and  nonbeing 
that  crosses  the  line  between  art  and  life.  Do  Hello 
Kitties  eat  bats?  Do  bats  eat  Hello  Kitties? 

Yet,  it  is  important  to  keep  in  mind  that  the  prac- 
tice of  wandering  metamorphosis  is  now  part  of  the 
logic  of  contemporary  fashion.  The  creation  and  ex- 
pression of  oneself  as  an  exercise  in  creativity  has  now 
become  a  marketing  gimmick.  We  live  in  a  culture  of 
"differences"  that  combines  alleged  creativity  with  a 
desire  to  be  unique,  but  only  according  to  static  for- 
mulas of  existence.  As  Cristiane  Mesquita  points  out: 
"Clothing  serves  as  a  means  of  expression  in  an  ex- 
istential landscape.  But  fashion  also  offers  the  mar- 
ket ephemeral  and  easily  substituted  identities."  How 
can  one  be  distinguished  from  the  other?  Alice  is  our 
challenge.51 

Alice  is  able  to  disturb,  to  intrigue,  to  destabilize. 
She  puts  us  in  contact  with  uncertainty,  unpredict- 
ability, turbulence,  the  untamed.  Breaking  with  hege- 
monic models  of  existence,  the  new  Alices  must  in- 
vent universes  by  paying  attention  to  their  own  inner 
landscapes.  Alices  give  themselves  over  to  existence 
and  say:  I  am  a  question.55 

7.    FRINGE 

7,  Kusama,  am  the  modern  Alice  in  Wonderland,  stated 
Japanese  pop  artist  Yayoi  Kusama,  who  since  the  1950s 
has  alicinated  psychedelic  worlds.  In  paintings,  col- 
lages, poems,  daring  acts,  sculptures,  fashions,  weird- 
ness,  and  surprising  installations,  she  shares  patterns, 
repetitions,  obsessions,  and  visions  of  the  infinite. 

Kusama  was  hospitalized  for  years  for  mental 
disorders,  and  her  works  reflect  her  challenging  per- 
ception of  reality,  where  the  boundaries  between  the 
body,  the  self,  and  the  environment  mix  and  mingle 
in  proliferations  of  repetitive  dots  that  pulse  and  vi- 


3° 


brate  with  the  cosmos.  We're  all  mad  here  .  .  .  otherwise 
you  ivouldn't  have  come,  said  the  Cheshire  Cat.  Kusa- 
ma  plays  with  mirrors  and  kaleidoscopes  to  produce 
bright  patterns  with  stunning  effects,  incorporating 
an  almost  hallucinatory  vision  of  reality,  in  an  experi- 
ence that  is  at  once  sensory  and  spiritual. 

In  the  1960s,  the  artist  went  to  New  York,  where 
she  carried  out  a  series  of  political  performances, 
under  the  philosophy  "Love  forever,"  promoting  a 
reaction  against  the  Vietnam  War  and  all  authoritar- 
ian, repressive,  and  conservative  powers.  These  body 
paintings  and  orgiastic  choreographies  were  per- 
formed before  the  sculpture  of  Alice  in  Central  Park, 
in  1968.  For  Kusama,  Alice  was  the  grandmother  of 
the  hippies,  and  she  became  Alice,  a  year  after  Grace 
Slick  sang  "White  Rabbit"  with  the  Jefferson  Airplane. 

Kusama  arrived  in  Central  Park  as  the  Hatter, 
with  her  nude  dancers,  inviting  everyone  to  drink 
the  tea  that  was  being  served  under  the  magic  mush- 
room. Red,  green,  and  yellow  dots  could  represent 
the  earth,  the  sun,  or  the  moon,  according  to  Kusama. 
She  painted  little  circles  on  the  bodies  of  those  pres- 
ent, so  that  people  would  divest  themselves  of  their 
outlines  to  return  "to  the  nature  of  the  universe." 
From  a  criticism  of  the  repressive  powers  symbolized 
by  the  social  routines  of  Alice's  teatime,  Kusama  has 
moved  towards  friendship  with  time,  crossing  bound- 
aries between  bodies  and  cosmic  rhythms,  diluting 
the  boundaries  of  the  self. 

And  if  Alice  were  not  in  the  dress,  but  in  its  folds? 
If  she  were  not  in  the  blue  material,  but  in  the  shadow 
and  the  light  of  a  multicolor  prism?  If  she  were  not  in 
the  hair,  but  in  the  rumors  of  its  movement?  Not  in 
the  apron,  but  in  the  traces  of  an  intimate  encounter? 
Not  in  the  shoes,  but  in  the  steps  into  the  unknown 
and  the  uncertainty  about  which  path  to  take?  Not 
in  the  pictures,  but  in  the  conversations?  Not  in  the 
conversations,  but  in  the  question  marks?  Not  in  the 
words,  but  in  the  pauses  that  breathe  between  them? 
Not  in  the  behavior,  but  in  the  beating  of  the  heart? 
Not  in  a  face,  but  in  a  dream?  Not  in  a  being,  but  in 
the  becoming? 

The  author  wishes  to  thank  Mark  Bursteinfor  his 
generous  collaboration;  Isabelle  Nieres-Chevrel  and 
Mark  Richards  for  kindly  sharing  research  material. 


1    Manganelli,  Giorgio.  Pinoquio:  um  liwro paralelo  (Sao 
Paulo:  Companhia  das  Letras,  2002),  116. 
2     Deleuze,  Gilles.  A  logica  do  sentido  (Sao  Paulo:  Editora 
perspectiva,  1974). 

3  Ovenden,  Graham,  and  John  Davis.  The  Illustrators  of  Alice 
in  Wonderland  (London:  Academy  Editions;  New  York: 
Martin's  Press,  1979). 

4  The  mixture  of  Carroll's  two  Alices  is  intentional,  since 
I  am  not  referring  to  the  book,  but  to  the  Alices  who 
journey  forward  and  unfold  in  multiple  journeys  in 
different  media  and  forms  of  expression. 


Yayoi  Kusama 

■'    Hubert,  Renee  Riese.  Surrealism  and  the  Book  (Berkeley: 

University  of  California  Press,  1988). 
6    Ovenden,  Graham,  and  John  Davis.  The  Illustrators  of  Alice 

in  Wonderland. 
1   This  paragraph  incorporates  ideas  from  Prof.  Dr.  Norval 

Baitello,  Jr.'s  As  imagens  que  nos  devoram  -  Antropofagia 

e  Iconofagia  (CISC,  2000),  www.cisc.org.br/portal/ 

biblioteca/iconofagia.pdf. 

8  Gatopor  lebre  is  an  expression  in  Portuguese  that  literally 
translates  as  "cat  in  the  place  of  hare"  and  refers  to 

a  clever  con  or  what  is  sometimes  referred  to  as  a 
"switcheroo." 

9  Machado,  Antonio.  "Caminante  no  hay  camino,  se  hace 
el  camino  al  andar,"  in  Machado,  Regina.  Acordais  (Sao 
Paulo:  DCL,  2004),  63. 

10  Ideas  from  Marshall  McLuhan's  Understanding  Media: 
The  Extensions  of  Man  (New  York:  McGraw  Hill,  1964) 
discussed  in  Augusto  Campos's  O  Anticritico  (Sao  Paulo: 
Companhia  das  letras,  1986),  126. 

11  "Where  Do  We  Go  from  Here?"  (Ou  allons-nous?) ,  a 
talk  delivered  at  the  Philadelphia  Museum  College  of 
Art  on  March  20,  1961,  first  published  in  the  Duchamp 
issue  of  Studio  International  189  (Jan.-Feb.,  1975),  repr. 
in  Jennifer  Gough-Cooper  and  Jacques  Caumont, 
"Ephemerides  on  and  about  Marcel  Duchamp  and 
Rrose  Selavy,  1887-1968"  in  Pontus  Hulten,  ed.,  Marcel 
Duchamp,  Work  and  Life  (Cambridge,  MA:  MIT  Press, 
1993).  Translated  by  Helen  Meakins. 

12  Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice  au  Pays  des  Merveilles.  ill.  Alain 
Gauthier  (Paris:  Rageot,  1994). 

13  Carroll,  Lewis.  Alica  v  krajine  zdzrakov,  ill.  Dusan  Kallay 
(Bratislava,  Slovakia:  Mlade  leta,  1981).  Translated  into 
and  published  also  in  German  (Dausien,  1984),  French 
(Grund,  1985),  and  Japanese  (Shinshosha,  1990).  The 
Slovak  edition  was  reprinted  by  Slovart  in  2010,  and  is 
forthcoming  in  English. 

14  Jonathan  Miller's  movie  Alice  in  Wonderland,  BBC,  1966. 


31 


www.martinbarooshian.org/Alice  in  Wonderland 
Entrance.htm. 

Carroll,  Lewis.  Les  aventures  d 'Alice  au  Pays  des  Merveilles, 
ill.  Nicole  Claveloux  (Paris:  Flammarion,  1972). 
Unsuk  Chin's  opera  Alice  in  Wonderland.  Prem.  Bavarian 
State  Opera,  Munich,  2007. 

Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland,  ill. 
Abelardo  Morell  (New  York:  Dutton  Children's  Books, 
1998). 

Carroll,  Lewis.  Les  Aventures  d  Alice  au  Pays  des  Merveilles, 
ill.  Andiony  Browne  (Paris:  Kaleidoscope,  1988). 
http://cahiley.com/portfolio/drawings. 
Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland,  ill.  John 
Vernon  Lord  (Oxford:  Artists  Choice  Editions,  2009). 
Ralph  Steadman's  illustrations  to  editions  of  Wonderland 
(London:  Dobson  Books,  1967)  and  Looking-glass 
(London:  Mac-Gibbon  &:  Kee,  1972)  have  often  been 
reprinted. 

Lee,  Suzy.  Alice  in  Wonderland  (Verona:  Grafiche  Siz, 
2002). 

Electronic  music  composer  Randy  Greifs  Alice  in 
Wonderland,  first  released  on  the  Staalplaat  label  in  The 
Netherlands  between  1991  and  1993  and  re-released  by 
Soleilmoon  in  2000. 

Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice's  Abenteuer  im  Wunderland,  ill.  Jassen 
Ghiuselev  (Aufbau-Verlag,  2000),  released  in  English  in 
2003  by  Simply  Read  Books  (as  Iassen  Ghiuselev). 
Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice  im  Wunderland,  ill.  Julia  Gukova 
(Esslingen,  Germany:J.  F.  Schreiber,  1991). 
Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice  no  pais  das  maravilhas,  ill.  Luiz  Zerbini 
(Sao  Paulo:  Cosac  Naify,  2009). 

Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland,  ill.  Oleg 
Lipchenko  (Toronto:  Tundra  Books,  2009). 
www.tyxikanov.com. 

John  Rae  wrote  and  illustrated  New  Adventures  of  Alice 
(Volland,  1917),  in  which  she  visited  Mother  Goose 
characters;  Dorothy  Furness  illustrated  Brenda  Girvin's 
Round  Fairyland  with  Alice  (Wells  Gardner  Darton,  1948), 
in  which  she  \isits  fairies  around  the  world;  Edward 
Bloomfield  illustrated  Howard  R.  Garis's  Uncle  Wiggily  and 
Alice  in  Wonderland  (Bloomfield,  1918). 
http://brasillewiscarroll.blogspot.com/2009/09/alice- 
na-arte-por-arlindo-daibert.html. 
Japanese  artist  Kuniyoshi  Kaneko  has  depicted  Alice 
in  a  variety  of  media,  from  book  illustrations  to  video 
games.  A  survey  of  his  works  may  be  found  on  http:// 
alicenations.blogspot.com/search?q=Kaneko+Kuniyoshi. 
www.dorothycircusgallery.com/past_detail. php?ID=32. 
Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice  in  Wonderland,  ill.  Tania  Ianovskaia 
(Toronto:  Tania  Press,  2005  and  2008). 
www.tanyamiller.com. 

Vince  Collins's  self-produced  short  film  Malice  in 
Wonderland  (1982). 

Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland,  ill.  DeLoss 
McGraw  (New  York:  Harper  Collins,  2001). 


www.elenakalisphoto.com/#alice-in-waterland. 
www.kokusyokusumire.net/AliceinUnderground.html. 
Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland,  ill.  Maggie 
Taylor  (Palo  Alto,  CA:  Modernbook  Editions,  2008). 
Silverwood  Films,  2008,  directed  by  Daniel  Barnz  and 
starring  Elle  Fanning. 

Computer  game  designer  of  American  McGee's  Alice  (2000) 

and  Alice:  Madness  Returns  (201 1 ) . 

Clearwater,  Bonnie.  Anna  Gaskell.  Catalog  (Museum  of 

Contemporary  Art,  North  Miami,  1998). 

Carroll,  Lewis.  Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland,  ill.  Camille 

Rose  Garcia  (New  York:  Harper  Design,  2010). 

www.rose-alice.net. 

Brown,  Trevor.  Alice  (Tokyo,  Japan:  Editions  Treville, 
2010). 

Svankmajer  is  mainly  known  for  his  1988  film  Alice  (Ncoz 
Alenky) .  His  book  illustrations  to  Wonderland  and  Looking- 
glass  are  discussed  in  the  next  section. 
From  the  book  of  children's  images  to  the  book  of  poetic  images. 
On  the  bridge  that  links  dreams  to  reality. 
On  the  border  between  Utopia  and  truth. 
Breton  inaugurated  the  Gravida  Gallery  with  a  pamphlet 
dedicated  to  the  surrealist  ideal  of  childish  femininity,  in 
which  the  cited  passage  could  be  read.  Bradley,  Fiona. 
Surrealismo  (Sao  Paulo:  Cosac  &  Naify,  1999),  49. 
Mabille,  Pierre.  Mirror  of  the  Marvelous  (Rochester, 
Vermont:  Inner  Traditions,  1998). 
Nieres-Chevrel,  Isabelle.  "Alice  dans  la  mythologie 
surrealiste,"  in  Lewis  Carroll  et  les  mythologies  de  I'enfance,  ed. 
Sophie  Manet  (Rennes:  Presses  Universitaires  de  Rennes, 
2005),  153-65. 

Fushigi  no  Kuni  no  Arisu  (Tokyo:  Kokushokankokai, 
2011)  translated  by  Satomi  Hisami,  illustrated  by 
Jan  Svankmajer.  Kagami  no  Kuni  no  Arisu  (Tokyo: 
Kokushokankoka,  2011)  translated  by  Satomi  Hisami, 
illustrated  by  Jan  Svankmajer. 

Campos,  Paulo  Mendes.  "Para  Maria  da  Graca,"  in  Para 
gostar  de  ler  4,  cronicas  (Sao  Paulo:  Atica,  1979),  73-76. 
Somers,  Sean.  "Arisu  in  harajuku"  in  Alice  Beyond 
Wonderland:  Essays  for  the  Twenty-first  Century,  ed. 
Christopher  Hollingsworth  (University  of  Iowa  Press, 
2009),  199.  Sumiko  Yagawa  is  referred  to  in  the  article 
in  the  Japanese  manner,  patronymic  first,  i.e.,  Yagawa 
Sumiko. 

Mesquita,  Cristiane.  "Roupa  territorio  da  existencia"  in 
Fashion  Theory:  A  revista  da  moda,  corpo  e  cultural,  no.  2 
(Sao  Paulo:  Editora  Anhembi  Morumbi,  2002):  121. 
Adapted  from  ideas  from  Rosane  Preciosa's  Producdo 
Estetica:  Notas  sobre  roupas,  sujeitos  e  modos  de  vida  (Sao 
Paulo:  Anhembi  Morumbi,  2005). 


32 


^ 


HK^ 


^ 


^ 


Tfee  Deaneny  Gauden 


I  was  initially  surprised  (not  to  say 
deeply  shocked)  at  Adam  Gopnik's 
recent  likening  of  the  work  of 
Charles  Dodgson/ Lewis  Carroll 
to  that  of  Norton  Juster/Norton 
Juster.  (The  New  Yorker,  October 
17,  2011).  What  was  Mr.  Gopnik 
driving  at?  If  he  is  right  in  saying 
"[The Phantom  Tollbooth is]  the  clos- 
est thing  that  American  literature 
has  to  an  'Alice  in  Wonderland' 
[sic]  of  its  own  ...  with  illustrations 
that  are  as  perfectly  matched  to 
Juster's  text  as  Tenniel's  were  to 
Carroll's  ..."  perhaps  we  should 
simply  recognize  AATWand  TPT 
as  the  respective  products  of  ap- 
proximately two  thousand  years 
of  the  development  of  Western 
civilization  in  Britain  as  compared 
to  approximately  one  tenth  that 
amount  of  time  in  the  United 
States. 

I  do  agree  with  Mr.  Gopnik's 
remarks  about  the  illustrators  of 
the  respective  books.  The  richness 
of  Carroll  is  reflected  in  the  exqui- 
site detail  and  complexity  of  Tenn- 
iel's drawings.  Juster's  simplicity  is 


perfectly  aligned  Feiffer's  fluidity, 
though  I  must  question  whether 
TPT  is  the  latter 's  best  work.1 

This  is  not  the  place  for  a  de- 
tailed critique  of  either  book,  but  I 
cannot  help  feeling  that  TPT  does 
not  even  plumb  the  depths  of  the 
Pool  of  Tears.  There  is  simply  no 
comparison  between  the  quality 
of  Carroll's  language  and  Juster's, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  quality  of 
the  puns.  Where  Carroll  invents, 
Juster  inserts.-'  While  TPTmay 
delight  a  precocious  reader  often, 
does  it  do  the  same  for  readers  of 
twenty,  thirty,  forty,  and  so  on,  as 
does  AATW? 

Full  disclosure:  before  reading 
Mr.  Gopnik's  article  I  reread  TPT, 
and  while  it  did  occasion  the  oc- 
casional chortle  it  certainly  did  not 
give  the  satisfaction,  stimulation, 
or  inspiration  AATW  and  TTLG 
always  provide  this  reader  of  ad- 
mittedly advanced  years. '  Perhaps 
it  is  best  to  say  that  Mr.  Gopnik's 
article  proves  once  again  that 
comparisons  are  odious  (as  well  as 
sometimes  alarming),  and  wistfully 


yearn  for  a  view  into  the  future 
to  see  the  reactions  of  its  readers 
to  see  if  TPT  is  indeed  a  classic. 
For  myself,  I  will  continue  to  steer 
readers  young  and  old  toward 
Wonderland  rather  than  Diction- 
opolis. 

Fernly  Bowers,  PhD,  DVM,  etc. 

French  Gulch,  California 

1  In  tribute  to  Mr.  Juster,  I  was  quite 
surprised  to  learn  that  there  is 

no  picture  of  the  hero  actually 
driving  past  the  tollbooth;  I  had 
only  imagined  a  very  clear  image  of 
Feiffer's  nonexistent  drawing  of  this 
incident. 

2  As  has  been  noted  elsewhere, 
Carroll's  books  have  pervaded  our 
culture  and  are  among  the  most 
quoted  in  the  world;  I  for  one  have 
never  come  across  a  reference 

to  TFT  that  is  expected  to  be 
understood  by  the  casual  reader. 

3  One  should  never  ask  a  gentleman 
his  age. 


as 

As  a  further  comment  to  Mark 
Burstein's  article  "Am  I  Blue?" 
in  Knight  Letter  85, 1  note  that 
Alice  wears  a  blue  dress  (with  red 


33 


trim)  in  the  set  of  Coloured 
Lantern  Slides  that  was  pro- 
duced between  1893  and 
1898  by  Primus,  the  London 
photographic  company,  and 
sold  in  three  boxed  sets  of 
eight  slides  each  for  home 


viewing.  The  slides,  which  mim- 
icked but  varied  from  Tenniel's 
illustrations,  can  also  been  seen 
in  an  edition  of  Wonderland  issued 
by  Harry  N.  Abrams  in  1988,  ac- 
companied by  the  original  "Lan- 
tern Lecture"  abridgment  of  the 


text.  In  these  pictures,  Alice  wears 
striped  socks,  as  she  does  in  Look- 
ing-Glassr,  in  Tenniel's  Wonderland 
they  are  plain. 

Yoshiyuki  Momma 

LCS-Japan 


One  of  [Charles  Schulz's]  favorite 
compliments  of  Peanuts  was  hear- 
ing it  compared  to  Lewis  Carroll's 
Alice  in  Wonderland. 

Rheta  Grimsky  Johnson,  Good 

Grief,  The  Story  of  Charles  M. 

Schulz,  Pharos  Books,  New  York, 

1989 


HSr 


^h 


"Can't  say.  Is  she  a  Snark  or  a 
Boojum?  Only  time  will  tell." 
Robertson  Dairies,  The  Lyre  of 
Orpheus,  Viking  Penguin,  Inc., 
New  York,  1988 


HSr 


In  St.  Aubyn's  world,  whoever 
controls  the  retelling  controls 
the  event.  We  might  call  it,  after 
Lewis  Carroll,  the  Humpty- 
Dumpty  effect. 

Zadie  Smith,  reviewing  At  Last, 
by  Edivard  St.  Aubyn,  Harpers, 
August  2011 


Then  [Adenauer]  took  a  trip  to 
Oxford  and  visited  Balliol — where 
his  nephew  Hans  had  been  an 
undergraduate — and  New  Col- 
lege. He  was  also  scheduled  to  visit 
Oriel,  but  here  unpleasantness  set 
in:  a  group  of  students  at  the  gates 
became  so  abusive  that  the  police 
directed  the  official  cars  through 
Canterbury  Gate  and  into  Christ 
Church  instead.  . . .  An  under- 
graduate . . .  pointed  out  the  statue 
of  Dean  Liddell,  the  father  of  the 
real-life  Alice  in  Wonderland.  He 
began  to  explain  that  the  Deanery 
Garden  was  at  the  centre  of  an 
important  English  children's  book 


^e^rV 


when  Adenauer  suddenly  stopped 
and  smiled,  quite  unruffled  by  the 
demonstration  he  had  witnessed, 
and  astonished  everyone  present, 
British  and  German  alike,  by  reel- 
ing off  long  quotations  from  the 
book. 

The  Oxford  Times,  May  11,  2011,  ref- 
erencing Charles  Williams,  Adenauer: 
The  Father  of  the  New  Germany, 
Little,  Brown  and  Company,  2000. 

m 


Everything  was  smaller  than  he 
remembered  it — it  was  like  Alice's 
Adventures  in  Wonderland,  and  he'd 
drunk  the  magic  tonic.  He  felt  like 
his  head  was  sticking  out  of  the 
chimney,  and  his  arm  was  out  the 
window. 

Lev  Grossman,  The  Magician 
King,  Viking,  New  York,  2011 


3S 

When  she  did  this,  she  suddenly 
descended  several  inches,  giving 
the  disconcerting  impression  that 
she  was  shrinking,  like  Alice  after 
consuming  the  botde  labeled 
"Drink  Me." 

Rebecca  Mead,  "Precarious 
Beauty,  "  the  New  Yorker, 
September  26,  2011 


"Oh,"  he  said,  faindy  ashamed  to 
be  drinking  the  guy's  tea  after  he'd 
reduced  him  to  some  capitalized 
character  out  of  Lewis  Carroll. 
Thomas  Mallon,  Arts  and 
Sciences,  A  Seventies  Seduc- 
tion, Ticknor  &  Fields, 
New  York,  1988 


m 

'You  are  very  decisive  yourself. 
Especially  for  someone  who  has 
lived  so  far  from  the  centre  of 
things." 

"But  it's  the  centre  of  things  for 
me,"  I  said,  and  "I'm  sixteen  years 
old.  Alice  was  a  child  and  every- 
thing was  every  day  for  her.  She'd 
seen  nothing  odd.  She  just  lived  in 
Oxford." 

"Her  dreams  say  otherwise." 
Jane  Gardam,  Crusoe's  Daughter, 
Atheneum,  New  York,  1986 


% 

There  is  not  a  word  in  the  Alices, 
nor  a  line  of  drawing,  to  be  ex- 
plained or  regretted. 

F.J.  Harvey Darton,  Children's 
Books  in  England,  Cambridge 
University  Press,  1 932 


Hfr 


She  could  tell  from  the  way  I 
squirmed  that  I  found  this  answer 
highly  unsatisfactory.  It  was  a  Mad 
Hatter  answer,  a  March  Hare  an- 
swer. Mama  couldn't  expect  to 
read  me  the  Alice  books  a  hun- 
dred dmes  and  get  away  with  such 
nonsense. 

Michael  Faber,  The  Apple: 
Crimson  Petal  Stories,  Canon- 
gate  Books  Ltd.,  Edinburgh,  2011 


34 


"  LllGo     V  ^  OF  MARK  BURSTEIN 


First,  of  course,  kudos  and  props  to  those  who 
made  the  fall  New  York  meeting  such  a  suc- 
cess, starting  with  Edward  Guiliano  and  his 
fine  staff  at  NYIT,  especially  Jennifer  Cucura,  in  this 
smoothly  operating  and  in  all  ways  superb  venue;  to 
Andrew  Sellon,  who  so  nobly  stepped  in  to  arrange 
for  our  dinner;  to  those  who  traveled  from  Chicago, 
Cleveland,  California,  North  Carolina,  and  even  far- 
ther afield — Ireland,  Brazil,  and  Puerto  Rico  to  be 
precise;  to  Janet  Jurist  and  Ellie 
Heller  for  their  generous  hospital- 
ity to  our  out-of-town  guests;  and  to 
our  fabulous  presenters:  Adriana 
Peliano,  Paulo  Beto,  James  Foto- 
poulos,  Emily  Aguilo-Perez,  Mor- 
ton Cohen,  Alison  Gopnik  (and 
her  silent  partner,  Alvy  Ray  Smith) , 
Jeff  Menges,  and  Michael  Everson 
in  a  most  delightful  surprise  ap- 
pearance, reading  a  passage  from 
Ailice's  Aventurs  in  Wunnerland  in 
his  hilarious  Scottish  burr. 

The  Alice  150  project  planning 
is  proceeding  apace,  thanks  to  the  diligent  efforts  of 
Jon  Lindseth  and  Joel  Birenbaum.  We  have  produced 
a  "vision  statement";  attracted  a  PR  management  firm 
whose  other  clients  include  Target,  GE,  and  Google; 
and  have  contracted  with  Oxford  University  Press  for 
the  Alice  in  a  World  of  Wonderlands  volumes,  a  worthy 
successor  to  Warren  Weaver's  Alice  in  Many  Tongues. 

July  4,  2012,  will  be  the  150th  anniversary  of  a  cer- 
tain boat  trip  on  the  Isis.  As  this  event  will  be  falling  on 
our  national  holiday  celebrating  our  freedom  from 
our  erstwhile  British  oppressors,  it  may  be  difficult  to 
get  media  coverage.  However,  we  will  be  working  with 
the  LCS(UK)  to  come  up  with  something  apropos.  If 
nothing  else,  on  that  day,  reenact  it  yourself:  Grab  a 
copy  of  Under  Ground  or  Wonderland  to  read  (or  down- 
load the  Cyril  Ritchard  recording  from  Amazon  into 
your  mobile  device),  invite  a  child  or  three,  pack  a 
picnic,  find  a  spot  along  a  nearby  river  (extra  credit  if 
you  row  there),  and  linger  in  the  golden  gleam. 

As  I  am  one  who  likes  to  plan  things  well  in  ad- 
vance, here  is  our  meeting  schedule  for  the  next  three 
years:  Spring  20 12:  April  28th  at  the  Houghton  Library 
of  Harvard  University  in  Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
and  the  next  day  at  Alan  and  Alison  Tannenbaum's 


collection  in  nearby  Chelmsford.  Fall  2012:  most  like- 
ly New  York  University.  Spring  20 ly.  Stephanie  Lovett 
and  Charlie  Lovett  will  be  our  hosts  in  North  Caro- 
lina. Fall  20 1  y.  the  amazing  sculptor  Karen  Mortillaro 
and  the  indomitable  Dan  Singer  have  offered  to  ar- 
range a  meeting  in  Los  Angeles.  Spring  2014:  "Some- 
where in  New  York,"  as  the  song  goes.  Fall  2014:  Day- 
na  (McCausland)  Nuhn,  Mahendra  Singh,  and  Andy 
Malcolm,  along  with  Tania  Ianovskaia  and  Oleg  Lip- 
chenko,  have  agreed  to  host  a  joint 
LCSNA  and  LCSCanada  meeting  in 
Toronto.  Spring  201 5:  San  Diego,  in 
conjunction  with  the  grand  opening 
of  the  Center  for  the  Study  of  Chil- 
dren's Literature  at  San  Diego  State 
University.  Fall  2075:  October  10-11 
in  New  York  City  for  Alicel50. 

Meetings  such  as  the  one  we 
just  had  (and  the  ones  coming  up) 
are  truly  magical  times  to  meet  up 
with  friends  old  and  new.  I  particu- 
larly treasure  an  afternoon  spent  at 
my  mom's  Manhattan  apartment 
with  my  longtime  cyber-  and  Skype  friend  Adriana 
Peliano,  whom  I  got  to  meet  face-to-face  (along  with 
her  husband,  Paulo)  for  the  very  first  time.  The  al- 
ways delightful  Maxine  Schaefer  reading, 
this  time  at  Horace  Mann  (reluctant 
though  I  was  to  mention  that  I  had, 
in  fact,  attended  their  biggest  rival, 
The  Fieldston 
School). 
The  meeting 
itself,  of  course, 
including  the 
breaks.  Relax- 
ing conversa- 
tion over  a  fine 
Fiorello  dinner. 
Janet's  convivial 
after-party. 

So  Alice  got  up  and  ran 
off,  thinking  while  she  ran, 
as  ivell  she  might,  ivhat  a  won 
derful  dream  it  had  been. 


35 


^ 


^ 


On  the  Discovery  01  an  rLn^Iish  Jabberwocky 


ALAN  LEVINOVITZ 


^Hh 


**► 


"^  W hile  browsing  the  philosophy  section  of  a 

%  #%  #  Chicago  antiquarian  bookshop,  I  found 
ml  jLi  coffee-stained  piece  of  paper  folded 
inside  a  copy  of  Ludwig  Wittgenstein's  Philosophi- 
cal Investigations.  On  it,  in  a  neat  script,  was  written 
a  note,  followed  by  a  version  of  Jabberwocky  in  my 
native  tongue!  Yes,  it  was  in  English.  An  unidentified 
author  (the  sheet  was  unsigned)  had  rendered  Car- 
roll's poem  using  only  authentic  English  words.  It  was 
the  first  time  I  had  ever  seen  the  feat  attempted. 

I  reproduce  here  the  short  note  preceding  the 
translation,  the  poem  itself,  and  some  annotations 
explaining  the  poet's  intentions.  These  last,  please 
understand,  are  no  more  than  educated  guesses,  but 
I  am  fairly  confident  about  their  accuracy.  Of  course 
nonsense,  even  sensical  nonsense,  is  no  friend  of  con- 
fidence, and  so  I  have  withheld  my  speculations  about 
the  second  half  of  the  poem  in  hopes  that  other  inter- 
preters might  feel  free  to  make  their  own.  Please  en- 
sure your  dictionary  is  up  to  the  task — I  have  looked 
up  all  the  words  and  confirmed  their  sensicality,  but 
oftentimes  only  by  resorting  to  my  trusty  OED. 

Transcription  of  note  (this  portion  of  the  paper 
was  afflicted  with  coffee  stains  that  mercifully  spared 
the  translation  itself):  Nonsense,  nonsense,  nonsense. 
Too  much  nonsense  is  [illegible].  Plenty  of  words  al- 
ready, enough  for  nearly  any  [illegible] .  Why  not  sub- 
stitute a  [illegible]  version  for  children?  [illegible] 
without  nonsense. 


•*    JABBER-COCKY   *?• 

'Twas  grilled  eve,  and  the  slubbering  skunks 
Did  whirl  and  windle  in  time's  way; 

All  wimpy  were  the  feathered  monks, 
and  monotremes  did  bray. 

"Beware  the  Jabber-cock,  my  son! 

The  jaws  that  bite,  the  claws  that  loot! 
Beware  the  Ju-Jak  bird,  and  shun 

The  scurrilous  Bandicoot!" 

He  took  his  vorax  sword  in  hand: 

Long  time  the  Soddish  foe  he  sought  — 

So  rested  he  by  the  Pando  tree, 
And  stood  awhile  in  thought. 

And  as  in  huffled  thought  he  stood, 
The  Jabber-cock,  with  eyes  of  flame, 

Came  whiffling  through  the  bilgy  wood, 
And  gorbled  as  it  came! 

One,  two!  One,  two!  And  through  and  through 
The  vorax  blade  went  slice-dice-hack! 

He  left  it  dead,  and  with  its  head 
He  went  gallanting  back. 

"And,  hast  thou  slain  the  Jabber-cock? 

Come  to  my  arms,  my  beamish  boy! 
O  grampus  day!  Huzzah!  Hurray!" 
He  snortled  in  his  joy. 

'Twas  grilled  eve,  and  the  slubbering  skunks 
Did  whirl  and  windle  in  time's  way; 

All  wimpy  were  the  feathered  monks, 
and  monotremes  did  bray. 


36 


Jabberwocky /Jabber-cocky:  Self-evident. 

brillig/grilled  eve:  In  the  1855  issue  of  Misch-Masch, 
Carroll  independently  confirms  brillig  as  meaning 
"The  time  of  broiling  dinner,  i.e.,  the  close  of  the  af- 
ternoon." Here  "grilled  eve"  evokes  that  very  culinary 
hour — eve  means  "the  close  of  the  day" — while  dupli- 
cating the  visual  and  acoustic  weight  of  brillig's  dou- 
ble 1.  Although  the  full  import  of  Humpty-Dumpty's 
later  definition  (4:00  in  the  afternoon  when  you  begin 
broiling  things  for  dinner)  is  not  completely  incorpo- 
rated, the  use  of  "grilled"  must  be  counted  a  valiant 
effort  in  that  direction.  And  given  the  alternate  sense 
of  "grilled"  as  "fearful,"  one  would  be  hard-pressed  to 
find  a  better  alternative.  The  rest  of  the  poem  is,  if 
nothing  else,  the  chronicle  of  a  fearful  evening. 

slithy/slubbering:  The  noun  form  of  "slubber"  means 
"slime,"  and  the  verb  means  "to  soil,"  as  well  as  "to 
run  or  skim  over  something  in  a  slovenly  manner." 
Elsewhere,  Carroll  defines  his  original  term  as  a  com- 
bination of  lithe  and  slimy.  Here,  perhaps,  the  trans- 
lation is  closer  to  the  nonsense  sense  of  slithy  than 
slithy  itself,  thanks  to  those  rich  deposits  of  meaning 
that  only  time  and  reality  can  bestow  upon  a  word. 

toves/skunks:  Toves,  Carroll  informs  us,  are  a  species 
of  badger  with  smooth  white  hair,  long  hind  legs,  and 
short  horns  like  a  stag,  that  live  chiefly  on  cheese. 
Skunks  and  badgers  both  belong  to  the  Mustilidae 
family,  and  the  skunk's  smooth  hair  (admittedly  white 
and  black)  as  well  as  its  well-known  taste  for  cheese 
make  it  an  ideal  substitution. 

gyre /whirl:  A  problematic  translation.  As  it  turns  out, 
gyre  is  a  real  word,  an  archaic  form  of  gyrate  that  ap- 
plies especially  to  circular  oceanic  surface  currents. 
This  causes  difficulty  for  everyone  involved:  Humpty- 
Dumpty  defines  it  as  "to  go  round  and  round  like  a 
gyroscope";  Carroll  writes  at  one  point  that  it  means 
"to  scratch  like  a  dog";  and  our  translator  appears  to 
have  replaced  a  perfectly  legitimate  word — perhaps 
for  the  sake  of  alliteration? 

gimble/windle:  Gimble,  again  from  Carroll:  "to  screw 
out  holes  in  anything."  And  from  Humpty-Dumpty 
we  have  "to  make  holes,  as  with  a  gimlet."  "Windle" 
straightforwardly  describes  the  motion  of  screwing:  to 
move  circularly  or  sinuously;  to  turn  over  and  over,  or 
round  and  round. 

wabe/time's  way:  Alice  herself  correctly  intuits  that 
"wabe"  refers  to  the  grass-plot  around  a  sun-dial,  and 
Humpty-Dumpty  confirms  her  intuition.  Here  that 
sense  is  rendered  as  time's  way.  A  loose  translation,  to 
be  sure,  chosen  most  likely  for  the  sake  of  the  rhyme. 

mimsy /wimpy:  "Mimsy"  could  be  "unhappy"  (Carroll) 
or  a  portmanteau  of  flimsy  and  miserable  (Humpty- 
Dumpty).  "Wimpy"  functions  as  a  portmanteau  of  two 
other  English  words,  limp  and  weepy,  which  them- 
selves correspond  to  flimsy  and  miserable  quite  nice- 
ly. Of  course,  wimpy  is  no  mere  portmanteau — on  its 
own  it  means  weak  or  sniveling. 


borogoves/feathered  monks:  One  Carrollian  primary 
source  has  borogoves  as  a  sort  of  extinct  parrot.  Monk  is 
often  used  by  avian  enthusiasts  as  shorthand  for  monk- 
bird,  a  type  of  parrot.  "Feathered"  emphasizes  the  avian 
sense  of  monk,  and  may  also  refer  to  the  extinct  practice 
of  tarring  and  feathering  unscrupulous  holy  men. 

mome  raths/monotremes:  "Monotreme"  designates 
those  rare  mammals  that  lay  eggs,  such  as  duck-billed 
platypuses.  As  such,  it  is  a  fitting  stand-in  for  the  con- 
troversial "mome  raths" — Carroll  asserts  they  are 
"grave  turtles,"  while  Humpty-Dumpty  maintains  that 
they  are  homesick  green  pigs  of  a  sort.  This  web  of 
Carrollian  metaconfusion  is  reflected  in  the  very  real 
biological  confusion  of  the  monotreme. 

outgrabe/bray:  Here  there  is  no  confusion.  All  sourc- 
es identify  "outgrabe"  as  the  past  tense  of  "outgribe," 
meaning  "to  squeak  or  whistle  loudly."  Braying  can 
refer  to  any  loud,  harsh  cry,  although  it  is  usually  as- 
sociated with  asses,  not  monotremes. 

catch/loot:  Some  small  change  in  meaning  for  the 
sake  of  rhyme — a  fair  exchange,  I  think. 

Jubjub/Ju-Jak:  The  Jubjub  bird  is  described  extensive- 
ly in  Carroll's  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark.  To  condense: 
It  is  an  exotic  bird,  and  one  to  be  feared.  Jujak  is  the 
standard  romanized  Korean  name  for  the  Chinese 
vermillion  bird,  a  mythical  creature  that  represents 
fire  and  controls  its  surroundings  by  magic. 

frumious/scurrilous:  In  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark, 
Carroll  provides  an  extraordinary  explanation  of  fru- 
mious:  "This  also  seems  a  fitting  occasion  to  notice 
the  other  hard  words  in  ("Jabberwocky").  Humpty- 
Dumpty's  theory,  of  two  meanings  packed  into  one 
word  like  a  portmanteau,  seems  to  me  the  right 
explanation  for  all.  For  instance,  take  the  two  words 
'fuming'  and  'furious.'  Make  up  your  mind  that  you 
will  say  both  words,  but  leave  it  unsettled  which  you 
will  say  first.  Now  open  your  mouth  and  speak.  If 
your  thoughts  incline  ever  so  little  towards  'fuming,' 
you  will  say  'fuming-furious.'" 

"Scurrilous"  connotes  both  fuming  and  furi- 
ous— it  refers  to  vituperative  or  invective  language. 
In  the  margin,  the  translator  has  written  "spurious  + 
scuttling."  "Scuttle"  is  descriptive  of  action  taken  in 
a  street  fight,  as  in  this  citation  from  the  OED:  "Five 
men,  or  rather  lads,  were  in  the  dock  (at  the  Man- 
chester City  Sessions)  charged  with  'scutding'..." 
"Spurious,"  of  course,  means  illegitimate  (particularly 
of  writing),  and  it  seems  the  translator  might  here  be 
sacrificing  literal  translation  for  a  play  on  words. 

bandersnatch/bandicoot:  The  bandersnatch  is  often 
understood  as  a  swift-moving  creature  capable  of 
extending  its  neck.  "Bander"  is  also  an  archaic  term 
for  "leader."  The  bandicoot  is  a  small  marsupial  with 
sharp  teeth  and  fierce  territorial  instincts,  capable  of 
running  extremely  quickly. 


37 


^ 


■*► 


ALL  MUST  HAVE  PRIZES 

You  Can  Get  Anything  You  Want,  in  Alice's  Restaurant 


^r 


JOEL  BIRENBAUM 


■^^^^^s  we  approach  2015,  my  thoughts 
^^^\  are  consumed  with  the  promi- 
M.  Xnence  of  Alice  in  popular  culture, 
as  that  is  the  theme  of  the  Alicel50  celebration. 
The  use  of  Alice  in  advertising  is  an  important  vantage 
point  from  which  to  view  the  phenomenon  of  Alice's 
omnipresence  in  everyday  life.  What  is  presented 
here  is  a  sampling  of  magazine  and  newspaper  ads 
to  show  how  Alice  was  used  to  promote  products  over 
the  years.  What  are  not  included  here  are  ads  for  Alice 
products  such  as  movies,  records,  books,  toys,  etc. 

I  have  to  admit  that  I  approached  this  column  in 
a  looking-glass  fashion,  conclusion  first  and  research 
after.  Usually  this  works  out  fine,  since  I  have  a  fairly 
inclusive  knowledge  of  Alice  collectibles.  This  time, 
however,  I  was  way  off  target.  My  preconceived  notion 
was  that  Alice  characters  and  themes  were  so  mallea- 
ble and  applicable  that  they  could  be  used  cleverly  to 


HUMPTY  DUMPTY 
RECITED 


..  ,tfiU1iiit 


'  In  >/>rmj>,  when  woods  art-  Retting  green, 
Oft  uii/i  ii  Guinness  am  I  seen." 

'In  summer,  uhen  the  (J<i>\  are  /<>»#, 
'A  Guinness,  />/ms<.-'  is  Mill  my  song." 

'In  autumn,  wnen  the  leaves  are  brown, 
I  like  to  qiuiffa  Guinness  down." 

'In  winter,  when  the  fields  are  white, 
A  Guinness  is  <i  cneer/itl  tight,"         ^ 


*V."T"  .£&J=*A 


■*► 


suit  most  any  product.  I  still  think  this  is  true, 

but  the  evidence  shows  that,  more  often  than 

not,  Alice  was  not  used  to  the  greatest  effect.  In 

many  cases,  illustrations  of  Alice  characters  were 
put  in  ads  just  to  attract  readers'  eyes  to  an  ad  they 
might  otherwise  not  read,  and  little  or  no  attempt  was 
made  to  inject  any  Carrollian  humor  or  logic. 

Cream  of  Wheat  produced  a  Mad  Tea  Party  ad 
in  1901,  followed  by  a  marvelous  Queen  Alice  ad  in 
1908  ("To  the  Looking-glass  World  it  was  Alice  that 
said/'I've  a  scepter  in  hand  I've  a  crown  on  my  head/ 
Let  the  Looking-glass  creatures  whatever  they  be/ 
Come  and  eat  Cream  of  Wheat  with  the  Queens  and 
with  me"').  The  first  decade  of  the  1900s  also  gave  us 
a  single  ad  per  year  for  Peter's  Chocolate  from  1904 
("'This  isn't  a  circus,'  said  the  Hatter  severely  to  Al- 
ice. 'It's  a  tea-party  and  you're  not  invited.'  'Oh,  yes,  I 
am,'  said  Alice.  'There's  PETER'S  CHOCOLATE  on 
the  table  and  that's  always  inviting.'"),  and  a  Water- 
man's Pens  ad  also  in  1904.  In  later  years,  the  Alice 
motif  was  used  by  other  cereal  and  chocolate  compa- 
nies, and  the  use  of  Alice  by  these  products  does  not 
seem  unreasonable.  The  first  half  of  the  twentieth 
century  was  rounded  out  by  ads  for  Lowney's  Choco- 
late, Post  Toasties,  Western  Electric,  Whitman  Candy, 
Quaker  Oats,  Steinway  Pianos,  Electrolux  Gas  Refrig- 
erators, Guinness,  Wrigley  Gum  Nash  automobiles, 
the  Cunard  Line,  Heinz,  Ford  ("'MY,'  said  Alice,  'the 
new  Ford  is  such  fun  to  drive!'"),  Comptometer,  San- 
ka,  Textron  Menswear,  Dumont  televisions,  Kayser 
Hosiery,  Welch's  Grape  Jelly,  Red  Goose  Shoes,  Phil- 
co,  and  Rose's  Lime  Juice.  The  Wrigley  Gum  ad  was  a 
tie-in  with  the  1933  Paramount  movie  starring  Char- 
lotte Henry.  The  Western  Electric  ad  promoted  their 
tall  telephone,  but  gas  refrigerators,  automobiles, 
menswear,  and  lime  juice  haven't  even  got  a  tenuous 
connection,  and  how  many  of  you  even  know  what 
a  comptometer  is?  And  the  diversity  of  this  range  of 
products  is  exceeded  in  the  latter  half  of  the  century. 

Alice  was  fair  game  for  advertising  any  product 
from  1951  on,  and  the  Disney  movie  added  a  new 
dimension  to  Alice  in  advertising  land.  The  Disney 
Alice  was  used  by  General  Electric  ("I  never  guessed 
what  made  me  cross/Poor  lighting  was  the  matter./ 
With  soft  and  cool  fluorescent  light/I'm  now  a  gay 
Mad  Hatter"),  Roval  Desserts,  Libbv  foods,  Swans 


38 


Down  cake  mixes,  and  NBC  White  Bread.  Non- 
Disney  Alice  still  maintained  prominence  in  this  era 
with:  Sirrine  Engines,  Metlife,  Post  Toasties,  Owens- 
Corning  Fiberglass  (Alice  in  Insulation-Land),  Burl- 
ington Industries,  Maidenform  ("I  dreamed  I  was  a 
mad  hatter  in  my  maidenform  bra"),  Boeing,  Merrill 
Lynch,  Ryan  Industries  (cryogenics),  Sony,  Douglas 
aeronautics,  Smirnoff  Vodka,  Rexall  drugs,  Alcan  Ca- 
ble, Hi-C  juice,  Fender  Guitar,  Mobil  Oil,  Precision 
Monolithics,  IBM,  and  Microsoft.  Fender  exploited 
the  connection  between  rock  music  and  drug  use,  by 
showing  the  hookah-smoking  caterpillar  playing  two 
Stratocaster  electric  guitars  (thereby  also  taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  caterpillar's  multiple  appendages). 

I  would  have  to  say  that  the  heyday  of  Alice  in 
advertising  was  1930-1970.  The  Guinness  ads,  which 
appeared  between  1931  and  1958,  were  definitely 
the  cleverest  of  the  bunch,  with  excellent  copywrit- 
ing  and  fine  illustrations.  They  also  win  the  award 
for  longest  time  span.  Philco's  campaign  of  1948  was 
of  high  quality  as  well  as  extensive,  and  appeared  in 
eight  different  major  magazines.  The  breadth  of  this 
campaign  makes  these  the  easiest  ads  for  collectors 
to  find.  An  ad  for  Quaker  Oats  was  probably  the  most 
collectable  ad  for  a  time,  because  it  was  illustrated 
by  Jessie  Wilcox  Smith,  although  this  artwork  was  no 
match  for  her  famous  Alice  illustration  in  Boys  and 
Girls  in  Bookland,  published  by  Cosmopolitan  in  1923. 
Basildon  Bond  and  BOAC  are  the  only  two  ads  that 
also  have  Lewis  Carroll  in  them.  The  Precision  Mono- 
lithics ad  campaign  of  1979  was  highly  successful  and 
was  awarded  the  Industrial  Advertising  Award  (KL 
14:4).  This  was  a  case  of  a  talented  marketing  service 
manager,  Gene  McClenning,  using  his  great  interest 
in  Alice  to  sell  an  unlikely  set  of  products. 


*V« 


^A  tin-  looking,^. 


«*-C  U  CM*    WH1  *n»tf» 

u*»  ft  »Mt«»i  **  »M 

•m  imx  M  *  mm*  -ami  ** 

*«  Hff  IBM  >t  Mw** 

■'■  i  \u\*%*  :L 
>«"•**'  •»,»»*  m»*>  '\ 
i.-:'  WM  u-  *»■:  '■■■•  v 
jttfcM  "•■•  •*  mamma  ' 


u: 


If  you  collect  Alice  ads,  the  temptation  is  to  pick 
the  highpoints.  Having  a  few  of  the  ads  in  your  col- 
lection is  nice,  but  the  more  you  have  the  better  ap- 
preciation you  will  have  for  Alice's  place  in  advertising 
history,  and  in  popular  culture. 


^\i/  ^i/  ^\i/  ^i/  ^\i/  s,,.co^-lik  \ik  fe  lik  lik 


3f*     M+     31*     31*     3f* 


EIMB         ♦?=_         *S=^.         *5=-         *S=^.         ♦S^-. 


Kevin  Barr 

*&m 

ffes&i&tiiS^  V\ 

Kevin  Kenjar 

Lauren  Benjamir 

i 

Richard  Kopley 

Johnny  Boyd 

033£$$&r 

Tina  Martin 

John  Bramble 

W^M   Jb 

Donna  Muse 

SuAn  Carey 

{Jj^Er^V^Br 

Doug  Proctor 

Wendy  Chevrier 

Hayley  Rushing 

David  Day 

Joann  Siegel 

Michael  Dirda 

Laia  Garcia 

Alexander  Fobes 

Laurence  Gareau 

Steve  Hoberman 

John  Kemeny 

Alexander  Snow 

Louise  Spunt 
Marc  Villafanna 

Ilk  fe 

life 

life 

+     \ik 

llfe 

l|k  \jk 

39 


BEAVER  PROBLEMS: 

SNARK  ARITHMETIC 

&A  TRUCULENT  ALLUSION 

August  A.  Imholtz,  Jr. 

In  "Fit  the  Fifth:  The  Beaver's  Les- 
son" of  Lewis  Carroll's  unsurpassed 
nonsense  epyllion  The  Hunting  of 
the  Snark,  the  Beaver  bemoans  the 
fact  that  he  had  lost  count  of  the 
number  of  times  his  companion, 
the  Butcher,  had  cried  ovit  on 
hearing  the  Jubjub  Bird. 

Here  is  that  whole  short  passage: 

"Tis  the  voice  of  the  Jubjub!" 

he  suddenly  cried. 
(This  man,  that  they  used 

to  call  "Dunce.") 
"As  the  Bellman  would  tell  you," 

he  added  with  pride, 
"I  have  uttered  that  sentiment 

once." 
"Tis  the  note  of  the  Jubjub! 

Keep  count,  I  entreat; 
You  will  find  I  have  told  it 

you  twice. 
'Tis  the  song  of  the  Jubjub! 

The  proof  is  complete, 
If  only  I've  stated  it  thrice." 
The  Beaver  had  counted  with 

scrupulous  care, 
Attending  to  every  word: 
But  it  fairly  lost  heart,  and 

outgrabe  in  despair, 
When  the  third  repetition 

occurred. 
It  felt  that,  in  spite  of  all  possible 

pains, 
It  had  somehow  contrived  to 

lose  count, 
And  the  only  thing  now  was 

to  rack  its  poor  brains 
By  reckoning  up  the  amount. 
"Two  added  to  one — if  that  could 

but  be  done," 
It  said,  "with  one's  fingers  and 

thumbs!" 
Recollecting  with  tears  how, 

in  earlier  years, 
It  had  taken  no  pains  with 

its  sums. 

The  problem,  however,  goes 
beyond  the  Beaver's  racking  of  its 
poor  little  brain  to  reckon  up  the 
amount.  A  beaver  cannot  add  "two 
to  one"  or  do  any  addition  "with 
one's  fingers  and  thumbs"  for  the 


Carrollian  Notes 


simple  reason  that  a  beaver  has  no 
thumbs.  Perhaps  because  that  is 
so  obvious  a  fact,  Martin  Gardner 
did  not  mention  it  in  his  otherwise 
rich  and  extensive  annotations 
in  either  his  The  Annotated  Snark 
(1962)  or  his  The  Annotated  Snark: 
The  Definitive  Edition  (2006). 

Carroll  of  course  would  have 
seen  beavers  in  the  Ashmolean 
Museum  in  Oxford,  where  an 
American  beaver  is  listed  in  the 
1836  Catalogue  Descriptive  of  the 
Zoological  Species,  Antiquities,  Coins, 
and  Miscellaneous  Curiosities.  And 
perhaps  it  is  even  more  impor- 
tant to  note  that  Carroll  owned 
a  copy  of  The  American  Beaver  by 
Lewis  H.  Morgan  (Philadelphia: 
J.  B.  Lippincott,  1868).  See  also 
Charlie  Lovett's  excellent  work 
Lewis  Carroll  Among  His  Books  (Jef- 
ferson, North  Carolina:  McFarland 
8c  Company,  2005),  in  which  he 
notes,  regarding  another  beaver 
conundrum,  that  "speculation  as 
to  the  gender  of  ( the  Snark  Bea- 
ver) should  perhaps  be  colored 
by  Morgan's  assertion  that  the 
mother  is  the  most  important 
member  of  the  Beaver  colony" 
(p.  217). 

Beavers  may  be  divided  into 
two  species:  the  North  American 
beaver  (Castor canadensis)  and 
the  Eurasian  beaver  (Castor fiber). 
Physiologically,  according  to  An- 
drew Kitchener,  "Although  super- 
ficially similar  to  each  other,  there 
are  several  important  differences 
between  the  two  species.  Eurasian 
beavers  tend  to  be  bigger,  with 
larger,  less  rounded  heads,  longer, 
narrower  muzzles,  thinner,  shorter 


and  lighter  underfur,  narrower, 
less  oval-shaped  tails  and  shorter 
shin  bones,  making  them  less 
capable  of  bipedal  locomotion 
than  the  North  American  species. 
Eurasian  beavers  have  longer  nasal 
bones  than  their  North  American 
cousins,  with  the  widest  point 
being  at  the  end  of  the  snout  for 
the  former,  and  in  the  middle  for 
the  latter.  The  nasal  opening  for 
the  Eurasian  species  is  triangular, 
unlike  that  of  the  North  American 
race,  which  is  square.  The  fora- 
men magnum  is  rounded  in  the 
Eurasian  beaver,  and  triangular 
in  the  North  American.  The  anal 
glands  of  the  Eurasian  beaver 
are  larger  and  thin-walled  with  a 
large  internal  volume  compared 
to  that  of  the  North  American 
breed.  Finally,  the  guard  hairs  of 
the  Eurasian  beaver  have  a  longer 
hollow  medulla  at  their  tips.  Fur 
colour  is  also  different.  Overall, 
66%  of  Eurasian  beavers  have  pale 
brown  or  beige  fur,  20%  have  red- 
dish brown,  nearly  8%  are  brown 
and  only  4%  have  blackish  coats. 
In  North  American  beavers,  50% 
have  pale  brown  fur,  25%  are  red- 
dish brown,  20%  are  brown  and 
6%  are  blackish."  (Andrew  Kitch- 
ener, Beavers,  2001;  Stowmarket: 
Whittet,  p.  144.)  One  would  sus- 
pect that  the  Beaver  in  the  crew 
of  the  Snark  expedition  is  a  Eur- 
asian one.  Interestingly,  the  bea- 
ver has  been  extinct  in  England 
since  the  sixteenth  century,  so 
perhaps  the  Bellman  impressed 
him  into  naval  service  on  an  ear- 
lier voyage. 

There  is  no  other  occurrence 
of  a  beaver  in  the  text  of  any  of 
Lewis  Carroll's  fictional  works, 
although  Tenniel's  illustration  at 
the  beginning  of  Chapter  III  of 
Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland 
may  depict  a  beaver  at  the  ex- 
treme right  of  the  picture,  above 
the  crab.  Most  of  Tenniel's  pool 
of  tears  menagerie  are  derived 
from  Carroll's  own  illustration 
of  this  scene  in  Alice's  Adventures 
Under  Ground,  so  one  can  safely 
infer  that  Carroll  deliberately 


4° 


selected  the  Beaver.  In  his  "Dou- 
blets" contribution  to  Vanity  Fair 
22  (Oct.  11,  1879),  one  of  the 
challenges  Carroll  poses  is  to 
change  the  word  BEAVER  into  the 
word  BRANDY  by  altering  one  let- 
ter at  a  time,  for  that  is,  of  course, 
how  the  Doublets  game  works. 

In  a  Nov.  24,  1877,  letter  to 
his  cousin  Lucy  Wilcox,  however, 
Carroll  intriguingly  writes:  "Why 
shouldn't  we  enjoy  the  things  we 
'have  to'  do?  Why,  I  believe  even 
the  beaver  that  had  to  go  up  the 
tree  was  glad  to  do  it.  At  least, 
you  know,  it  could  have  stayed 
below  if  it  had  liked."  Professor 
Morton  N.  Cohen  wryly  observes 
in  his  note  on  that  passage  that 
"We  cannot  identify  this  particu- 
lar beaver"  ( The  Letters  of  Lewis 
Carroll,  Oxford:  Oxford  Univer- 
sity Press,  1979,  Vol.  1,  p.  288). 
From  Carroll's  tone  and  his  clear 
supposition  that  Lucy  would  be 
familiar  with  this  beaver  story,  it 
would  seem  that  the  reference 
must  be  to  some  fable  or  story. 
And  yet,  which  one?  There  is  only 
one  fable  dealing  with  beavers  in 
Aesop,  but  that  beaver  does  not 
climb  a  tree,  nor  do  the  other  ref- 
erences to  beavers  in  Aristotle  or 
in  more  obscure  classical  authors 
recount  any  tree-climbing  beavers. 

In  the  January  1871  issue  of  The 
Galaxy  (Vol.  11,  no.  1),  an  Ameri- 
can magazine,  Mark  Twain  had 
published  the  following  anecdote: 

While  up  the  river  I  heard 
the  following  story  show- 
ing how  an  animal  can  rise 
when  necessary  superior  to 
its  nature:  "You  see,"  said 
the  narrator,  "the  beaver 
took  to  the  water  and  the 
dog  was  after  him.  First  the 
beaver  was  ahead  and  then 
the  dog.  It  was  tuck  and 
nip  whether  the  dog  would 
catch  the  beaver,  and  nuck 
and  tip  whether  the  beaver 
would  catch  the  dog.  Fi- 
nally the  beaver  got  across 
the  river  and  the  dog  had 
almost  caught  him,  when 
phit!  Up  the  beaver  skun  up 
a  tree." 


"But,"  said  a  bystander, 
"beavers  can't  climb  trees." 

"A  beaver  can't  climb 
a  tree?  By  gosh,  he  had  to 
climb  a  tree,  the  dog  was 
crowdin  him  so!"  (p.  156) 

The  only  other  reference  to 
a  beaver  in  a  tree  that  I  can  find 
occurs  in  a  fable  "The  bear  in  the 
quicksand"  in  a  2004  anthology, 
Brilliant  Stories  for  Assemblies,  edited 
by  Paul  Urry  (Edinburgh:  Brilliant 
Publications).  Here  is  the  relevant 
passage: 

"Please,"  begged  the  bear. 
"Won't  someone  help  and 
get  me  out  of  the  sand?" 
Straight  away  the  beaver  ran 
up  a  tree.  She  ate  quickly 
through  some  vines  and 
dragged  them  to  the  side  of 
the  quicksand  ..."  (p.  8) 


In  spite  of  Urry's  statement 
that  this  is  an  ancient  Greek  fable, 
I  can  find  it  nowhere  in  ancient 
Greek  literature.  In  fact,  if  any- 
thing, it  might  sound  at  first  more 
like  a  Sanskrit  fable  than  a  Greek 
one,  except  for  the  fact  that  there 
are  no  beavers  in  India. 

There  is  at  least  one  more 
tree-climbing-beaver  expression 
to  be  found  in  Henry  C.  Row- 
land's Across  Europe  in  a  Motor  Boat 
(1908)  on  p.  124: 

"On  the  whole  we  felt  that 
the  most  arduous  part  of 
our  journey  lay  behind  us, 
while  the  crucial  point,  that 
of  getting  up  the  shallow 
Main  and  into  the  old  Lud- 
wig  Canal,  was  now  removed 
but  a  few  days.  All  that  we 
were  able  to  learn  on  this 
important  question  was  of 
the  most  discouraging  char- 
acter, but  as  Pomeroy  cheer- 
fully remarked,  it  was  simply 


a  case  where  the  Beaver  had 
to  climb  the  tree!" 

Perhaps  when  all  nineteenth- 
century  British  newspapers 
and  periodicals  are  digitized, 
it  will  be  possible  to  determine 
whether  one  or  more  of  them 
reprinted  Twain's  tall  tale  of  the 
tree-climbing  beaver.  If  so,  that 
might  have  been  the  beaver  to 
which  Carroll  alludes  in  his  let- 
ter to  his  cousin  Lucy  Lutwidge. 
Until  then,  this  particular  Beaver 
reference  will  likely  remain  just 
another  gnawing  problem. 

8S 


LITTLE  ALICE  IN  AMERICA 

Clare  Imholtz 

Lewis  Carroll  had  a  poor  opin- 
ion of  Americans.  He  dumped 
rejected  copies  of  three  of  his 
books — Wonderland,  The  Game  of 
Logic,  and  The  Nursery  Alice — in 
this  country.  (All  three  rejected 
editions  are  now  rarities  for  collec- 
tors.) About  Nursery  Alice,  Carroll 
said  that  he  could  not  possibly 
sell  the  rejects,  which  he  deemed 
"too  gaudy,"  in  England — to  do 
so  would  ruin  his  reputation — but 
they  would  do  very  well  for  Ameri- 
cans, who  cared  little  about  quality. 

That  may  have  overstated  the 
case,  but  perhaps  Carroll  had  rea- 
son to  be  upset  with  us.  During  his 
lifetime,  several  U.S.  periodicals 
mistakenly  gave  Carroll  credit  for 
composing  a  poem  that  was  actu- 
ally written  by  his  cousin,  Menella 
Bute  Smedley,  a  rather  sweet  and 
sentimental  poem  that  Carroll 
might  have  parodied  in  Wonder- 
land, were  it  not  by  his  cousin,  of 
whom  he  was  quite  fond.  Worse, 
these  periodicals  got  the  title  of 
Carroll's  book  wrong,  saying  that 
Smedley's  poem  appeared  in 
" Little  Alice  in  Wonderland." 

The  problem,  however,  did 
originate  in  England,  and  with 
the  venerable  weekly  The  Specta- 
tor, which  reviewed  Wonderland 
twice,  first  on  December  23,  1865, 
and  then  again,  inexplicably,  on 
December  22,  1866,  as  part  of 


41 


a  package  review  of  twenty-one 
children's  books.  On  the  second 
occasion,  The  Spectator  twice  called 
Carroll's  book  Little  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land, never  once  providing  the  cor- 
rect tide.  Little  Alice 'was  the  third 
book  reviewed,  following  Hans 
Christian  Andersen's  Stories  for  the 
Household  (they  spelled  Andersen's 
name  wrong,  too)  and  Aunt  Judy 's 
Christmas  Volume  for  1866,  in  which 
Smedley's  poem  (the  title  of  which 
they  also  got  wrong)  had  appeared. 

The  review  praised  all  three 
books.  The  comments  about 
Aunt  Judy  and  Little  Alice  abut  one 
another  closely,  as  there  are  no 
paragraph  breaks  throughout  the 
entire  piece.  Speaking  first  of  Aunt 
Judy,  The  Spectator  writes: 

We  must  ask  our  readers  to  believe 
in  the  worth  of  the  stories  and  the 
general  contents  on  the  strength 
of  our  assertion;  but  we  can  give 
a  specimen  of  the  verse  which  is 
by  no  means  above  the  average, 
and  is  still  in  our  opinion  amongst 
the  most  taking  that  we  have  ever 
seen  in  productions  of  this  kind. 
The  stanzas  are  the  opening  ones 
of  the  "Child's  Address  to  the 
Rose" — a  poem  dedicated  to  Ceci- 
lia Tennyson,  and  in  their  pleasing 
simplicity  worthy  of  their  destina- 
tion, supposing  the  lady  in  ques- 
tion to  be  a  poet's  daughter:  — 

"White  rose,  talk  to  me! 

I  don't  know  what  to  do. 
Why  do  you  say  no  word  to  me 

Who  say  so  much  to  you? 

"I'm  bringing  you  a  little  rain, 
And  I  shall  be  so  proud 

If,  when  you  feel  it  on  your  face, 
You  take  me  for  a  cloud. 

"Here  I  come  so  softly 

You  can  not  hear  me  walking; 
If  I  take  you  by  surprise 

I  may  catch  you  talking. 

"Tell  all  your  thoughts  to  me. 

Whisper  in  my  ear; 
Talk  against  the  winter, 

He  shall  never  hear. 


"I  can  keep  a  secret 

Since  I  was  five  years  old; 

Tell  if  you  were  frightened 
When  first  you  felt  the  cold; 

"And  in  the  splendid  summer, 
While  you  flush  and  grow, 

Are  you  ever  out  of  heart. 
Thinking  of  the  snow?" 

We  must  not  omit  to  mention 
that  there  is  a  pretty  illustration 
attached  to  this  poem,  and  that 
the  engravings  generally  are 
above  the  average,  and  decid- 
edly enhance  the  charm  of  the 
volume.  Little  Alice  in  Wonderland, 
we  are  not  surprised  to  see,  has 
reached  a  fifth  thousand;  so 
much  clever  and  yet  genuine  fun 
in  the  letter-press,  and  so  much 
grace  and  humour  in  the  illus- 
trations have  never  before  been 
found  within  the  same  compass. 
The  sweet  figure  of  little  Alice 
contrasts  delightfully  all  through 
the  book  with  the  funny  creatures 
and  people  she  encounters  in  her 
most  exciting  journey;  and  as  she 
never  makes  a  slip  in  her  man- 
ners or  loses  her  sense  of  propri- 
ety in  the  most  trying  situations, 
her  story  may  be  considered  as 
strictly  moral  as  it  is  exquisitely 
amusing.  This  is  the  last  of  the 
three  books  that  every  child 
ought  to  have. 

The  comments  on  Aunt  Judy  end 
with  the  word  "volume,"  and  those 
on  Wonderland  begin  with  the  word 
"Little."  Only  about  a  quarter  of 
Smedley's  poem,  which  was  actu- 
ally titled  "A  Child  to  a  Rose,"  is 
quoted  in  the  review. 

Within  a  month,  a  careless 
reader,  fortunately  anonymous, 
somehow  incorporated  "A  Child  to 
a  Rose"  into  Little  Alice,  and  hand 
in  hand  the  two  crossed  the  Atlan- 
tic. Every  Saturday,  a  U.S.  weekly,  a 
self-proclaimed  "Journal  of  Choice 
Reading  Selected  from  Foreign  Lit- 
erature," reprinted  the  verses  from 
the  Spectator  review  in  its  January 
26,  1867,  number,  saying,  "We  find 
the  following  graceful  verses  in  a 
volume  entitled  Little  Alice  in  Won- 
derland, a  child's  book,  illustrated 


by  Tenniel,  and  published  in 
London  by  Macmillan." 

The  spurious  title  must  have 
stayed  in  circulation  for  a  few 
years.  In  August  1869,  The  West- 
ern Monthly  (later  The  Lakeside 
Monthly),  a  Chicago  journal,  pub- 
lished a  review  of  Mopsa  the  Fairy 
by  Jean  Ingelow,  which  stated 

"Mopsa"  is  just  a  little  suggestive 
of  another  fairy  tale  that  has 
become  household  property — 
"Little  Alice  in  Wonderland" 
and  we  should  not  be  surprised 
to  know  that  the  author  was 
well  acquainted  with  it.  There 
are  certain  unconscious  resem- 
blances between  the  two — the 
same  odd  transitions  and  queer 
way  of  putting  things,  so  marked 
in  "Little  Alice."  This  is  particu- 
larly noticeable  in  Jack's  dream, 
when  charmed  to  sleep  by  little 
Mopsa 's  story  in  the  land  of 
the  "one-foot-one"  fairies — that 
same  wonderfully  grotesque 
imagery,  that  stepping  over  into 
the  realm  of  careless  vagaries, 
which  almost  unpleasandy  sug- 
gests insanity.  We  consider  this 
a  decided  blemish  on  "Little 
Alice's  Adventures,"  but  doubt 
whether  it  is  marked  enough  to 
be  censurable  in  "Mopsa." 

Publication  of  Lee  and  Shepard's 
edition  of  Wonderland  in  Spring 
1869,  which  was  more  widely 
reviewed  and  advertised  than 
the  Appleton  edition  of  1866, 
must  have  helped  to  extinguish 
incidences  of  the  false  tide.  No 
further  references  are  found  for 
twenty  years.  Then,  on  December 
14,  1889,  The  Critic  (New  York) 
prints  a  letter  from  one  "W.L."  of 
New  London,  Connecticut,  who 
quotes  the  passage  from  the  Janu- 
ary 1867  Every  Saturday,  and  asks, 
"Was  this  in  the  first  edition  of 
the  book  which  has  since  become 
so  well  known  under  the  title  of 
'Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonder- 
land,' and  which  was  perhaps  first 
published  under  the  title  given 
above?"  Sadly  for  W.  L.,  no  reply 
is  recorded. 


42 


LEWIS  CARROLL,  MAN  OF  SCIENCE 

Fran  Abeles 

On  August  17,  2011,  The  Centre 
for  Philosophy  of  Natural  and  So- 
cial Sciences  at  the  London  School 
of  Economics  was  the  setting  for 
the  first  meeting  devoted  entirely 
to  Lewis  Carroll's  work  in  the  sci- 
ences. The  sponsors  and  organiz- 
ers of  this  historic  event  were  Mark 
Richards,  chairman  of  The  Lewis 
Carroll  Society  (UK);  assisted  by 
Amirouche  Moktefi,  a  postdoctoral 
fellow  at  the  Logic,  History  and 
Philosophy  of  ScienceArchives 
Poincare  laboratory  at  Nancy  Uni- 
versity; the  eminent  mathematical 
historian  Ivor  Grattan-Guinness, 
currently  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics;  and  a  mathematician 
well  known  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic,  Robin  Wilson,  president- 
elect of  the  British  Society  for  the 
History  of  Mathematics. 

All  the  available  seats  were 
booked  (and  a  long  waiting  list 
remained)  for  the  daylong  confer- 
ence that  began  at  9:45  a.m.  After 
everyone  had  introduced  them- 
selves, Mark  and  Amirouche  of- 
fered some  introductory  remarks. 
Mark  then  presided  over  the  first 
session  of  three  talks.  Robin,  who  is 
the  author  of  the  recent  mathe- 
matical biography  of  Carroll,  Lewis 
Carroll  in  Numberland  (2008),  spoke 


on  "Charles  Dodgson  and  Oxford 
University."  Fran  Abeles,  editor 
of  three  volumes  in  the  Lewis 
Carroll  pamphlets  series  published 
by  the  LCSNA  (mathematics, 
political  theory,  logic),  presented 
a  paper  on  "Charles  Dodgson 's 
Engagement  with  Nonfinite 
Processes,  1885-1895."  Edward 
Wakeling,  editor  of  the  ten  vol- 
umes of  the  published  edition  of 
Lewis  Carroll's  unabridged  diaries, 
described  "Charles  L.  Dodgson 
and  His  Mathematical  Circle." 

The  second  morning  ses- 
sion, chaired  by  Robert  Thomas, 
editor  of  Philosophia  Mathematica, 
consisted  of  Ivor's  talk  (dedi- 
cated to  the  memory  of  Tony 
Beale),  "The  Appreciation  of 
Carroll  by  Bertrand  Russell  and 
Philip  Jourdain,"  followed  by 
Amirouche's  paper,  "What  Makes 
Lewis  Carroll's  'Symbolic  Logic', 
Symbolic."  (Carroll's  symbolic 
logic  was  the  topic  of  Amirouche's 
doctoral  dissertation.) 

From  the  very  beginning  of 
the  conference,  and  continuing 
up  until  the  very  end,  Catherine 
Richards,  assisted  by  LCS  com- 
mittee member  Sarah  Jardine- 
Willoughby — who  also  baked  the 
cakes — took  care  of  all  of  us  with 
varied  and  delicious  refreshments. 

In  the  first  of  the  two  afternoon 
sessions,  chaired  by  LCS  member 
Sarah  Stanfield,  Mark,  who  also 
is  a  specialist  on  Carroll's  logic, 


spoke  on  "Dodgson  and  Darwin." 
Eugene  Seneta,  the  author  of 
all  the  authoritative  published 
articles  on  Carroll's  work  in 
probability,  and  a  fellow  of  the 
Australian  Academy  of  Sciences, 
presented  his  paper,  "Lewis 
Carroll  and  Probabilistic  Science: 
Some  Influences  and  Contacts." 
David  Singmaster,  the  well-known 
mathematician  and  editor-des- 
ignate of  the  games  and  puzzles 
volume  in  the  Lewis  Carroll  pam- 
phlets series,  gave  the  final  paper 
in  this  session,  "Lewis  Carroll's 
Mathematical  Puzzles." 

The  lively  final  session,  last- 
ing until  5:30  p.m.,  was  a  panel 
discussion  led  by  Amirouche,  who 
posed  provocative  questions  to 
the  panelists:  Fran  Abeles,  Mark 
Richards,  Edward  Wakeling,  and 
Jenny  Woolf,  author  of  the  recent 
biography  of  Carroll,  The  Mystery 
of  Lewis  Carroll  (2010).  Their  re- 
sponses elicited  many  remarks  as 
well  as  additional  questions  from 
the  audience. 

LCSNA  members  will  be 
informed  when  the  conference 
proceedings  are  published.  The 
success  of  this  first-time  event  has 
inspired  Mark  to  plan  another 
devoted  to  Carroll  as  a  scientist 
that  could  take  place  within  the 
next  few  years.  Stay  tuned! 


43 


SIMON  SAYS 

Mark  Burstein 

Photojournalist  Peter  Simon,  in 
his  coffee-table  biography  Eye  and 
I  (Bulfinch,  2001),  writes  about  his 
warm  memories  of  childhood  sing- 
alongs  with  his  talented  pianist 
father,  his  mother,  and  his  three 
musical  sisters.  Two  of  the  sisters, 
Carly  and  Lucy,  recorded  two 
albums  for  children  in  1963-64 
and  a  third,  The  Simon  Sisters  Sing 
the  Lobster  Quadrille  and  Other  Songs 
for  Children,  for  Columbia  in  1969. 
It  contained  a  minor  hit,  "Wyn- 
ken,  Blynken  and  Nod,"  as  well  as 
Lucy's  setting  of  Carroll's  poem.  A 
compilation,  called  Carly  &  Lucy 
Simon  Sing  Songs  for  Children,  was 
released  in  1970  by  Children's  Re- 
cords of  America,  and  has  recendy 
been  reissued  on  CD  by  Shout  Fac- 
tory (ISBN  9781603991933). 

Sadly,  Peter's  father,  Richard, 
died  in  1960,  but  the  litde  publish- 
ing company  he  had  founded  in 
1924  with  his  pal  Max  Schuster 
continues  to  thrive;  in  fact,  it 
remains  to  this  day  one  of  the 
most  successful  English-language 
publishers.  Peter's  eldest  sister, 
Joanna,  a  mezzo-soprano,  won 
the  Metropolitan  Opera  auditions 
in  1962,  and  went  on  to  a  storied 
operatic  career.  The  middle  sister, 
Lucy,  became  a  composer  for  mu- 
sicals, best  known  for  her  setting 
of  The  Secret  Garden,  and  has  won 
two  Grammys.  Wonder  whatever 
happened  to  Carly? 


0*s  ^d  . 


IK 

THE  LOVE-INS 

Mark  Burstein 

Released  by  Columbia  Pictures  in 
1967  and  recently  become  avail- 
able on  DVD  (Sony  Screen  Clas- 
sics by  Request) ,  this  wretched 
endeavor,  produced  by  low-budget 
schlockmeister  Sam  Katzman, 
was  one  of  the  first  "exploitation" 
films  to  portray  the  newly  emerg- 
ing counterculture,  albeit  in  a 
clueless,  negative  manner.  Patri- 
cia Cross  (Susan  Oliver)  and  her 


^ 


boyfriend  Larry  Osborne  (James 
MacArthur — you  know,  "Danno" 
Williams  of  Hawaii  Five-O) ,  portray 
two  students  in  an  unnamed  San 
Francisco  college  who  are  expelled 
for  publishing  an  underground 
paper,  The  Tomorrow  Times.  As  a 
result,  a  philosophy  professor,  Dr. 
Jonathan  Barnett  (Richard  Todd), 
resigns  his  teaching  position  and 
is  soon  convinced  by  a  sleazy,  con- 
niving hippie  to  become  a  Timothy 
Leary-type  advocate  for  the  youth 
movement  and,  specifically,  the  use 
of  LSD.  He  gains  a  cult  following. 

The  movie's  most  memorable 
scene  depicts  Patricia's  lurid 
"trip,"  in  which  she  drops  too 
much  acid  at  a  "happening" 
(party)  after  a  band  proto-raps 
a  song  about  Wonderland.  She 
quite  believes  she's  Alice — as 
the  other  characters  morph  into 
their  Wonderland  equivalents  for 
an  extended  musical  sequence, 
during  which  she  attempts  some 
modern-dance  poses,  grooves  on 
other  costumed  characters  singing 
and  dancing,  sheds  some  clothes, 
seduces  a  danseur  (no  explana- 
tion of  who  he  is  supposed  to  be), 
and  engenders  a  psychodrama 
freak-out  in  a  nearby  room. 

The  sensational  nature  of  the 
film  caused  it  to  be  banned 
in  the  United  Kingdom.  I 
would  ban  it  too,  but  only 
because  it's  truly  unwatch- 
able,  even  in  a  "stoned- 
out,  so  bad  it's  good"  way. 
The  completist  needs  it,  of 
course,  and  kudos  to  Geoffrey 
Chandler  for  digging  it  up.  Far 
freakin'  out,  man. 

As  to  the  perpetrators  of  this 
unholy  mess?  Book  'em,  Danno 


BEWARE  OF  GREEKS 
BEARING  SNARKS? 

Doug  Howick 

If  you  wanted  to  introduce  a 
friend  or  acquaintance  to  The 
Hunting  of  the  Snark,  what  better 
and  easier  way  to  do  so  than  by 
buying  the  latest  edition?  "What's 
easy  about  that?"  I  hear  you  won- 
der. But  Greek  publisher  Paravion 
Press  has  devised  a  novel  way  to 
give  anyone  a  Fit,  with  a  minimum 
of  Agony  on  your  part. 

Paravion  Press  publishes 
postcard-sized  (15.0  x  10.5  cm) 
(5"  x  4")  editions  of  favorite 
short  literary  works  that  are 
tailored  to  be  sent  by  mail.  At 
the  beginning  is  a  page  "for  your 
correspondence,"  in  case  you  want 
to  add  a  few  words  of  your  own, 
and  each  book  comes  with  its  own 
envelope,  so  that  it's  ready  to  mail 
with  just  the  addition  of  a  name, 
an  address,  and  a  stamp. 

The  Hunting  of  the  Snark  is 
one  of  the  latest  publications  by 
Paravion  Press.  With  illustrations 
by  Nic  Rawling,  designed  by  Will 
Brady,  and  set  in  Linotype  Swift 
by  Masterpiece  Printers  Inc., 
in  New  York,  it  is  crisp,  clearly 
printed,  and  perfectly  easy  to  read. 
Each  of  the  eight  Fits  is  printed 
in  full,  although  the  dedication 
inscription  to  Gertrude  Chataway 
and  the  preface  by  Carroll  are  not 
included. 

Of  course,  the  idea  of  a  small- 
sized  edition  of  Snark  is  not  new. 
The  first  pirated  copy  of  the  work, 


Seeking  the  Snark  with  forks  and 

hope,  by  Nic  Rawling 


44 


published  by  James  R.  Osgood  and 
Company  of  Boston  in  1876,  was 
actually  smaller  than  this  latest 
edition,  but  it  was  still  a  hardcover 
book  rather  than  a  softcover 
booklet.  So  also  were  the  many 
Macmillan,  London,  Miniature 
Editions  first  published  in  1910 — 
and  I  do  have  a  treasured  copy 
of  the  Barbara  J.  Raheb,  Tarzana, 
California,  1981  miniature,  which, 
despite  its  57  pages,  is  a  really  tiny 
2.2  X  1.5  cm!  No,  this  booklet  is 
more  similar  to  the  1960s  edition 
of  the  Snark  published  by  J.  L.  Carr 
of  Kettering,  Northamptonshire, 
and  reprinted  by  Quince  Tree 
Press  in  2004. 

The  illustrations  by  Nic 
Rawling,  whose  work  was 
previously  unknown  to  me,  are 
unusual  and  quite  unlike  those 
of  any  other  Snark  illustrator.  I 
have  lately  learned  of  Rawling's 
performance  collaborative  The 
Paper  Cinema,  which  is  part 
animation  and  part  puppetry,  for 
which  Nic  cuts  out  hundreds  of 
images  from  his  own  drawings  and 
projects  them  onto  a  large  screen, 
to  form  layered  scenes. 

The  two  major  illustrations 
in  this  publication  are  just  such 
compositions.  The  first  depicts 
the  Bellman,  wearing  a  folded 
newspaper  boat  as  a  hat  and 
tinkling  his  bell,  within  a  collage 
topped  by  the  finger  of  a  hand 
indicating  the  way  to  go.  The 
other  features  two  large  forks  held 
by  the  Butcher  (in  obligatory  ruff 
and  dunce's  cap),  as  well  as  by  the 
Beaver,  in  the  midst  of  a  selection 
of  strange,  creepy,  unrecognisable 
creatures.  There  are  also  a  few 
smaller  sketches  of  walking 
thimbles,  scattered  into  the  text, 
including  the  front  cover. 

I  like  it!  Go  to  www.paravion 
press.org  to  order  at  US  $10.00 
per  copy,  or  less  for  multiple  sets. 


& 

Snarked!  0,  1,  and  2 

Written  and  illustrated 

by  Roger  Langridge 

Kaboom!  Studios 

A  Division  of  Boom  Entertainment 

Andrew  Ogus 

One  measure  of  an  author's  achie- 
vement is  the  lives  that  his  or  her 
characters  may  be  given  by  the 
hands  of  others.  Roger  Langridge 
has  based  his  delicious  comic  book 
series  on  two  of  Carroll's  relatively 
obscure  figures:  the  Walrus  and 
the  Carpenter.  In  the  prequel  to 
the  series  (Issue  0),  we  are  intro- 
duced to  the  louche  heroes,  Wil- 
berforce  J.  Walrus  and  Clyde  Mc- 
Dunk  (nice  to  know  their  names), 
and  their  fellow  protagonists, 
Princess  Scarlet  and  Prince  Russell 
(a.k.a.  "Rusty"),  the  children  of 
the  Red  King — who  has  gone  off 
on  a  mysterious  sea  voyage. 

The  book  is  chock-full  of  hi- 
larious drawings  and  characteriza- 
tions, but  there  is  also  a  sense  of 
invisible  threat  throughout;  an 
excidng  adventure  is  imminent. 
While  aimed  at  young  readers, 
the  comic  offers  plenty  of  jokes, 
puns,  and  Carrollian  references 
to  delight  readers  of  all  ages.  The 
back  of  volume  0  is  jammed  with 
fun  stuff,  including  abbreviated 
versions  of  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark 
and  the  original  Walrus  and  Car- 
penter poem  (curiously,  with  a 
couple  of  stanzas  left  out) ,  as  well 
as  puzzle  and  game  pages,  cast 
sketches,  the  Jabberwock  newspaper 
("You  Too  Can  Believe  Six  Impos- 
sible Things  Before  Breakfast"), 
and  the  Princess's  diary. 

The  adventures  continue  in  Is- 
sues 1  and  2,  with  the  appearance 
of  the  Cheshire  Cat  (who  has  to 
pay  a  visit  to  a  girl  in  Oxford,  the 
Gryphon,  more  cast  members,  the 
number  42  and  deeper  character- 
izations and  threats  to  our  heroine 
(who  fears  only  Snarks)  and  silent 
hero  (well,  he's  too  young  to  talk). 
There's  a  brief  section  of  the  origi- 
nal Snark,  which  I  for  one  would 
like  to  see  expanded  into  its  own 
book.  Issue  3  will  be  out  in  Decem- 
ber. I  can  hardly  wait. 


Alice's  Adventures  in  NYC 

Wonderland — The  Text  Generation 

SMJ  Crimp 

Illustrated  by  Arielle  Jessup 

Hatter  Publishing  (2011) 

Kindle  edidon  $5.99 

Cindy  Watter 

An  amusing,  if  occasionally  pain- 
ful, conceit,  available  only  on 
Kindle  as  of  now.  As  a  rule,  read- 
ing a  book  for  review  is  a  pleasant 
experience.  One  has  an  excuse  to 
avoid  the  tedium  and  squalor  of 
housework,  and  lying  on  a  couch, 
flipping  pages  is  a  reassuringly  cozy 
way  to  spend  the  day.  Obviously, 
Kindles  were  not  made  for  some- 
one like  me.  The  author  kindly 
sent  me  a  link  so  I  could  download 
her  book,  and  I  read  it  on  the 
screen  of  my  computer.  I  am  of 
an  age  to  associate  the  computer 
screen  with  work,  not  games  or  so- 
cializing. This  means  that  my  read- 
ing experience  was  excruciating. 

But  who  cares  about  me?  With, 
at  best,  twenty-five  years  of  (rapidly 
declining)  spending  power  left,  I 
am  less  important  than  the  typical 
preadolescent.  Apparently  that  is 
the  market  for  an  Alice  that  has 
been  translated  into  text-messag- 
ese.  This  Alice,  like  the  original,  is 
a  dream  within  a  frame  story,  but 
with  a  twenty-first-century  Alice 
(who  is  somehow  related  to  the 
original  Alice,  and  I  do  not  know 
how  that  is  possible  unless  Mrs. 
Hargreaves's  last  remaining  son, 
who  accompanied  her  to  New  York 
in  1932,  sowed  a  few  too  many  wild 
oats  on  the  visit).  This  Alice  (now 
nine  years  old,  not  seven,  and 
extremely  oriented  to  the  culture 
of  conspicuous  consumption)  goes 
with  her  mother  to  Central  Park, 
falls  asleep,  and  the  rest  is  a  famil- 
iar story. 

The  author  kindly  provides  an 
epigraph  explaining  the  purpose 
for  this  translation:  "Sometimes  2 
re-tell  a  gr8  story  u  hve  2  know  the 
language  of  th  day."  Right  away 
there  is  the  problem  with  th/the — 
both  are  used.  As  if  reading  the 


45 


work  were  not  difficult  enough, 
the  text-message  style  of  spelling 
is  not  consistent.  There  are,  for 
example,  several  different  spellings 
for  Central  Park:  CP,  C  Park,  C  Prk, 
Central  Prk,  etc.  "Great"  is  "gr8" 
and  "grt."  "Wonderland"  is  some- 
times capitalized,  sometimes  not. 
In  addition,  in  the  glossary  there  is 
confusion  with  plural,  possessive, 
and  contraction.  Shouldn't  "PIR — 
Parent's  in  room"  be  "Parents"? 
And  shouldn't  "YSAN — Your  such 
a  nerd"  use  "You're"?  "HHHIS"  has 
no  definition.  "DL"  is  defined  as 
"lowdown"  but  I  know  that  "keep  it 
on  the  down  low"  means  "keep  it  a 
secret."  And  somehow  I  don't  think 
"WAB"  means  "What  a  bunch." 
The  twenty-first-century  Alice  likes 
Justin  Bieber,  Ralph  Lauren's  kid's 
candy  store,  and  "Eliose,"  who 
must  be  Kay  Thompson's  creation 
"Eloise." 

The  actual  book  is  quite  close 
to  Carroll's  original,  and  not  com- 
pletely in  text  message  style,  thank 
goodness.  I  was  happy  to  see  that 
"melancholy"  remained  in  place, 
a  testament  to  Carroll's  (and 
Crimp's)  belief  that  children  can 
learn  a  challenging  vocabulary. 

While  I  deplore  a  nine-year-old 
who  wants  Christian  Louboutin 
anything,  I  smiled  at  the  brand- 
name  placement  for  the  three 
Alice's  Tea  Shops  in  Manhattan, 
and  the  author  thoughtfully  en- 
courages readers  to  go  to  the  Alice 
statue  in  Central  Park,  and  even 
provides  the  cross  street. 

Judging  from  her  e-mail,  Susan 
Crimp  is  a  delightful  person,  and 
her  pen  name  is  worthy  of  an  Eng- 
lish Edwardian  murder  mystery 
writer.  I  would  love  to  be  able  to 
tell  readers  that  this  version  of 
TBBITWWW  (the  best  book  in  the 
whole  wide  world)  is  an  absolute 
necessity,  but  it  is  not.  It  is  an  af- 
fordable curiosity  for  the  collector, 
and  it  may  well  lure  a  determinedly 
wired  tween  into  Wonderland.  I  do 
appreciate  the  ONNTA  (Oh  no  not 
this  again)  abbreviation;  it  seems 
much  more  ladylike  than  the  fa- 
miliar BOHICA  (bend  over  here  it 


comes  again).  Now  I  shall  lie  down 
in  a  dark  room  with  a  cold  rag  on 
my  forehead. 

* 


The  Logic  Pamphlets  of  Lewis 

Carroll  and  Related  Pieces 

Edited  by  Francine  E  Abeles 

291  pages 

LCSNA/University 

Press  of  Virginia 

ISBN  978-0-930326-25-8 

Sen  Wong 

INTRODUCTION 

The  Logic  Pamphlets  (Volume  4  of 
The  Pamphlets  of  Lewis  Carroll) 
is  a  collection  of  three  sets  of 
Dodgson/Carroll's  papers,  letters, 
and  worksheets:  The  first  set  has 
to  do  with  syllogisms  and  puzzles 
arising  from  the  syllogistic  forms; 
the  second  set  has  to  do  with  the 
hypothetical  and  problems  arising 
from  arguments  based  on  hypo- 
thetical propositions  (including 
replies  from  other  philosophers 
and  logicians);  and  the  third  set 
contains  logic  exercises  and  exam- 
ples for  instructional  purposes. 
In  addition  to  a  general  in- 
troduction, the  volume  editor, 
Francine  F.  Abeles,  has  written  an 
independent  introduction  to  every 
set  of  the  collected  papers.  All  the 
introductions  are  written  with  such 
clarity  that  aficionados  who  are  not 
well  versed  in  the  logic  discipline 
are  provided  with  enough  basic 
information  to  facilitate  an  appre- 
ciation of  Carroll's  logic  writings. 

1.  THE  CRAZY  19™  CENTURY: 
TWO  PHENOMENA  CURIOSA 

A.  THE  CASE  OF  GEOMETRY 

Let's  cut  to  the  chase  and  go  back 
to  the  nineteenth  century  to  see 
what  Dodgson's  colleagues  were 
doing  at  the  time.  Dodgson  passed 
away  in  1897;  two  years  later,  in 
1899,  David  Hilbert  published  his 
Grundlagen  der  Geometrie  {Founda- 
tions of  Geometry,  hereafter  GG) , 
which  demonstrated  a  new  meth- 
odology for  independence  and 
consistency  proofs  in  geometry,  but 
which  was  also  meant  for  the  entire 


classical  mathematical  enterprise. 
Gottlob  Frege  was  taken  aback 
by  the  theoretical  "errors"  that 
he  read  in  the  book  and  initiated 
a  correspondence  with  Hilbert. 
The  younger  Hilbert  tried  to 
explain  his  methodologyto  Frege 
but  without  success,  and  having 
grown  tired  of  Frege 's  nagging, 
he  ceased  correspondence  after  a 
few  exchanges.  Frege  wouldn't  let 
it  go,  however,  and  started  writing 
two  series  of  articles,  both  titled 
Uber  die  Grundlagen  der  Geometrie 
(On  the  Foundations  of  Geom- 
etry) .  This  was  the  infamous  (if 
you  think  that  Frege  had  a  mo- 
mentary lapse  of  reason)  or  excit- 
ing (if  you  think  that  Frege  was 
on  to  something)  Frege-Hilbert 
Controversy,  which  over  a  century 
later  is  still  making  noises.  But  we 
are  not  going  to  talk  about  the 
controversy. 

The  nineteenth  century  was  a 
crazy  century  for  geometry.  Hil- 
bert's  GG  may  be  seen  partly  as 
a  reaction  to  just  that  craziness. 
During  the  semester  of  1898- 
1899,  Hilbert  taught  a  course  of 
lectures  on  Euclidean  geometry 
at  the  University  of  Gottingen. 
The  main  results  of  the  lectures 
were  later  rearranged  and  pre- 
sented as  a  memorial  address 
celebrating  the  unveiling  of  the 
Gauss-Weber  Monument  at  Got- 
tingen in  the  early  summer  of 
1899.  It  seems  that  GG  was  not 
only  an  attempt  to  demonstrate  a 
new  methodology  in  doing  clas- 
sical mathematics,  it  was  meant 
to  be  a  sort  of  "conclusive"  pre- 
sentation of  Euclidean  geometry, 
and  such  a  "conclusive"  presenta- 
tion turned  out  to  be  a  formal 
axiomatic  system  in  which  things 
such  as  points,  straight  lines,  and 
planes  were  developed  logically. 
Where  did  such  an  urge  or  need 
come  from? 

Entering  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, Euclid's  postulates  were  not 
so  "self-evident"  anymore.  His 
notion  of  postulates  was  found  to 
be  inadequate,  and  our  "Euclid- 
ean" intuition  of  space  was  a  little 


46 


shaky.  First  there  was  a  Russian 
mathematician,  Nikolai  Ivanovich 
Lobachevsky  (1792-1839),  who 
removed  the  parallel  postulate 
from  Euclid's  list  of  postulates. 
From  there,  he  constructed  his 
non-Euclidean  geometry.  The 
Italian  geometer  Eugenio  Beltrami 
(1835-1900)  created  a  model 
called  a  "pseudosphere,"  which 
provided  an  interpretation  in 
which  Lobachevsky 's  geometry  was 
demonstrated  to  be  (relatively) 
consistent,  whereas  Euclid's  paral- 
lel postulate  was  false — while  his 
other  postulates  (axioms)  were  true! 
At  the  same  time,  the  Hungarian 
mathematician  Janos  Bolyai  (1802- 
1860)  independently  worked  out 
a  non-Euclidean  geometry  simi- 
lar to  that  of  Lobachevsky — not 
to  mention  Bernhard  Riemann 
(1826-1866),  who  constructed  a 
geometry  in  which  the  shortest  dis- 
tance between  two  points  was  not  a 
straight  line.1 

Jose  Alberto  Coffa,  a  historian 
of  philosophy,  has  given  us  this 
vivid  picture  of  the  time: 

During  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  through  a 
process  still  awaiting  explanation, 
the  community  of  geometers 
reached  the  conclusion  that  all 
geometries  were  here  to  stay.2 

It  is  a  stunning  description. 
Was  there  such  a  happy  consensus 
among  geometers  in  the  second 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century? 
Amid  the  mushrooming  of  non- 
Euclidean  geometries,  Hilbert 
probably  found  it  desirable  to  put 
Euclidean  geometry  on  a  solid 
modern  foundation — a  system  of 
axioms  set  out  in  GG — on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other,  to  dem- 
onstrate a  rigorous  way  of  doing 
mathematics. 

Dodgson  was  born  in  1832.  All 
the  major  non-Euclidean  geom- 
etries of  the  nineteenth  century 
were  practically  invented  during 
his  lifetime!  But  it  seems  that  he 
paid  absolutely  no  attention  to  the 
hustle  and  bustle  of  the  newfound 
strangeness  of  space  and  time.  As 


far  as  geometry  was  concerned, 
his  focus  was  Euclidean  geometry 
only.  This  was  the  first  interesting 
phenomenon  referred  to  in  this 
section's  title. 

He  certainly  was  aware  of  the 
heretics  and  their  work  in  geom- 
etry; in  fact,  he  even  wrote  about 
them  in  a  book  called  Euclid  and 
His  Modern  Rivals,  which  took  the 
form  of  a  whimsical  dialogue.  It 
was  published  in  1879  and  was 
a  defense  of  Euclid  through  the 
mouths  of  Minos — sounds  Greek, 
doesn't  it? — and  Euclid  against  the 
"blasphemy"  of  a  professor  Nie- 
mand — sounds  German,  doesn't  it? 
Indeed,  it's  German  for  "nobody." 
Not  only  that,  but  curiouser  and 
curiouser,  it  sounds  almost  like  the 
name  of  the  infidel  Riemann! 

B.  THE  CASE  OF  LOGIC 

Let's  turn  now  to  logic.  There  was 
another  controversy  in  England, 
several  decades  earlier,  although 
not  as  famous.  As  remarked  by  Sir 
William  Hamilton  (1788-1856), 
the  period  between  John  Locke 
and  the  early  nineteenth  cen- 
tury was  quite  barren  of  any  real 
contribution  to  logic  in  England. 
So  Hamilton  proposed  the  quan- 
tification of  the  predicate  (of  a 
subject-predicate  sentence  type) 
in  the  1850s.  It  was  not  a  new  idea. 
At  least  two  Gottfrieds  had  done 
it:  one  was  Leibniz  (1646-1716), 
the  other  Ploucquet  (1716-1790). 
Johann  Heinrich  Lambert  (1728- 
1777)  and  Georg  von  Holland 
(eighteenth  century)  had  tried  it 
too.  Frederic  de  Castillon  (eigh- 
teenth-nineteenth century)  also 
had  quantified  the  predicate.  Even 
the  Englishman  George  Bentham 
(1800-1884)  quantified  the  predi- 
cate in  a  table  of  propositions  in 
his  Outline  of  a  New  System  of  Logic, 
published  in  1827.  Augustus  De 
Morgan  (1806-1878),  professor 
of  mathematics  at  the  University 
of  London,  said  rightly  that  many 
predecessors  had  done  it  already, 
although  Hamilton  insisted  that  it 
was  his  innovation.  The  result  was 
a  quarrel  that  lasted  27  years,  from 


1846  until  the  curtain  finally  fell 
in  1873. 

It  was  an  exciting  time  in  Eng- 
land. Logic  was  on  its  way  to  be- 
coming a  legitimate  independent 
discipline.  Dr.  Abeles  has  already 
mentioned  a  few  logicians  in  her 
introduction;  I'll  repeat  some  of 
those  names  with  additional  infor- 
mation. 

De  Morgan  started  writing 
about  logic  in  1847  with  Formal 
Logic;  or,  the  Calculus  of  Inference, 
Necessary  and  Probable.  George 
Boole  (1815-1864)  published  his 
first  book,  The  Mathematical  Analy- 
sis of  Logic,  Being  an  Essay  toward  a 
Calculus  of  Deductive  Reasoning,  on 
exactly  the  same  day  De  Morgan 
published  his  Formal  Logic.  Hav- 
ing throughout  the  years  changed 
some  of  his  ideas  and  refined  oth- 
ers, in  1860  De  Morgan  published 
his  Syllabus  of  a  Proposed  System  of 
Logic,  which  was  possibly  meant  to 
be  a  definitive  textbook  of  logic. 
De  Morgan  and  Boole  were  the 
two  most  important  contributors 
to  British  logic  in  this  period.  Like 
Hamilton,  De  Morgan  was  bent  on 
improving  the  traditional  Aristo- 
telian logic  within  the  framework 
of  the  categorical  syllogisms.  For 
example,  his  first  move  was  to  en- 
large the  number  of  propositional 
types  by  manipulating  all  the  com- 
binations and  distributions  of  two 
terms  and  their  negations.  The  so- 
called  De  Morgan's  Laws  are  essen- 
tially laws  of  distributions.  But  he 
introduced  also  the  notion  of  an 
arbitrary  and  stipulated  "universe 
of  discourse,"  and  that  has  turned 
out  to  be  enormously  significant. 
We  shall  come  back  to  this  when 
we  talk  about  Carroll's  attitude 
towards  the  existential  import  of 
universal  propositions. 

In  the  case  of  Boole,  his  major 
work  was  An  Investigation  of  the  Laws 
of  Thought,  on  ivhich  Are  founded  the 
Mathematical  Theories  of  Logic  and 
Probability,  which  was  published  in 
1854.  Abeles  has  rightly  pointed 
out  that  he  was  "algebraizing  logic, 
i.e.,  rewriting  syllogisms  in  a  new 
notational  system  rather  than  in- 


47 


venting  a  new  logical  calculus." 
However,  he  made  a  breakthrough 
by  giving  the  old  logic  a  purely 
extensional  interpretation.  Terms 
(small  letters)  are  now  treated 
strictly  as  classes  of  objects  or 
things.  Symbols  such  as  "  +  ",  "  — ", 
and  "X"  serve  as  binary  operators. 
Boole's  algebra  of  logic  is  a  simple 
and  elegant  system  that  is  also  very 
intuitive.  In  fact,  Boole's  own  pre- 
sentation was  axiomatic,  though 
not  rigorously  axiomatic. 

Nonetheless,  it  was  complained 
that  Boole's  algebra  was  not  so 
much  a  system  of  logic  as  an  al- 
gebra of  the  numerals  1  and  0, 
meaning  Boole's  algebra  is  not 
"logical"  enough.  One  person  who 
held  such  an  opinion  was  William 
Stanley Jevons  (1835-1882).  For 
Jevons,  the  real  glitch  was  that 
Boole's  system  was  a  calculus  of 
objects  (or  things)  taken  in  their 
extension.  So  he  set  out  to  sort 
of  rework  Boole's  algebra,  and 
the  result  was,  in  his  own  words,  a 
calculus  of  terms  in  intension.  For 
some  reason,  Jevons 's  logic  is  not 
studied  anymore.  As  C.  I.  Lewis 
(1883-1964),  his  colleague  across 
the  Atlantic,  commented,  "On  the 
whole  Jevons'  methods  are  likely  to 
be  tedious  and  have  little  of  math- 
ematical nicety  about  them."3 

Lewis's  predecessor  Charles 
Sanders  Peirce  (1839-1914), 
who  was  largely  unknown  in  his 
lifetime,  was  an  original  mind  in 
many  disciplines.  His  contributions 
ranged  over  mathematics,  geodesy, 
metaphysics,  logic,  semiosis,  theory 
of  reasoning,  and  much  more.  In 
logic  alone,  his  ideas  were  so  many 
and  so  original  that  it's  not  pos- 
sible to  hint  at  anything  in  a  sen- 
tence or  two.  I  shall  take  a  risk  and 
mention  just  what  I  think  is  the 
gem  (next  to  his  theory  of  signs) 
of  Peirce's  fully  mature  mind.  Late 
in  1896,  he  invented  a  system  of 
existential  graphs  (EG),  a  system  of 
logic  diagrams,  neglected  for  over 
half  a  century,  which  was  worked 
out  (alpha  and  beta)  for  the  first 
time  from  his  manuscripts  by  Don 
D.  Roberts  in  the  1960s  and  finally 


published  in  the  1970s.  EG  not 
only  can  express  and  deduce  Ar- 
istotle's syllogisms,  it  can  handle 
predicate  logic  quite  well.  There 
are  three  parts  in  EG:  the  alpha 
part  for  pro  positional  logic,  the 
beta  part  for  quantificational  logic, 
and  the  gamma  part  for  modal 
logic.  EG  constitutes  an  effective 
topological  graph  method  of  proof 
that  is  highly  visual,  and  it  is  ex- 
actly because  of  this  visual  aspect  of 
the  system  that  EG  seems  to  have  a 
quality  of  reflecting  how  we  "per- 
form" reasoning. 

From  the  "new"  world,  we  move 
back  to  the  "old"  world,  and  our 
story  has  come  full  circle.  The 
father  of  first-order  logic  was  busy 
as  a  bee  developing  his  new  system 
of  logical  notation  (Begriffsschrift 
or  Conceptual  Notation).  In  paper 
after  paper,  he  tried  to  clarify  the 
extremely  important  concept  of 
function;  in  order  to  set  a  founda- 
tion for  arithmetic,  he  analyzed 
deeply  the  concept  of  number 
(Grundlagen  der  Arithmetik  or  Foun- 
dations of  Arithmetic).  After  years 
of  laying  this  foundation,  he  finally 
made  his  move,  and  in  Grundg- 
esetze  der  Arithmetik  (Basic  Laws  of 
Arithmetic),  he  used  his  new  logic 
to  construct  a  solid  foundation  for 
arithmetic  (the  backbone  of  clas- 
sical mathematics,  of  course),  only 
to  see  his  foundation  collapsed  by 
a  letter  from  a  young  man  from 
England.  That  young  man  was 
Bertrand  Russell,  and  in  the  letter 
was  a  paradox  that  was  later  known 
as  Russell's  Paradox. 

Here's  the  second  unusual 
phenomenon.  In  such  an  exciting 
time,  when  British  logicians  were 
trying  to  algebraize  Aristotelian 
logic,  when  American  logicians 
were  dissatisfied  with  the  limita- 
tion of  the  categorical  propositions 
and  the  syllogistic  argument  types, 
and  when  the  German  Frege  was 
inventing  a  theory  of  quantifica- 
tion and  creating  a  new  logic,  why 
did  Dodgson  adhere  to  Aristotelian 
logic,  in  exactly  the  way  he  clung 
to  Euclidean  geometry  despite  the 
blossoming  of  new  geometries? 


It  is  certainly  not  unusual 
for  some  scholars  to  cling  to  an 
orthodox  or  traditional  posi- 
tion in  some  discipline  within 
a  certain  period  of  time.  The 
above  two  questions  arise  from 
the  intertwining  of  two  contexts. 
If  I'm  successful  in  presenting  a 
vivid  picture  of  the  activities  of 
the  geometers  and  the  logicians 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
reader  should  have  sensed  the 
intellectual  richness,  adventure, 
and  invention  of  the  time,  in  at 
least  those  two  fields.  But  what 
really  makes  a  student  of  Dodg- 
son scratch  her  head  is  that,  if 
he  had  a  philosophy  of  language 
at  all — as  I  think  he  did — it  was 
a  very  modern  one. '  His  attitude 
towards  language  (natural  lan- 
guage at  least)  was  quite  flexible. 
He  certainly  understood  that 
language  is  an  artifact.  The  Witt- 
gensteinian  slogan  "the  meaning 
of  a  word  is  its  use"  applies  per- 
fectly to  the  Alice  books.  Dodgson 
anticipated  Wittgenstein  and 
preceded  all  the  ordinary  lan- 
guage philosophers  of  the  1930s 
and  1940s.  Dodgson  was  no  dog- 
matist. Evidence  was  strewn  every- 
where throughout  the  Alice  books 
that  he  was  fully  convinced  that 
language  can  be  used  to  do  many 
different  things  and  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  the  inherent 
meaning  of  a  word.  If  he  could 
embrace  such  an  open  attitude 
towards  language,  why  couldn't 
he  accept  at  least  the  possibility  of 
a  non-Euclidean  geometry  and  a 
non-Aristotelian  logic,  especially 
a  logic  that  goes  beyond  categori- 
cal sentences?  What  could  be  the 
stumbling  block? 

My  best  guess  would  be  his 
religion.  Dodgson  was  ordained 
as  a  deacon  of  the  Anglican 
Church  (1861),  though  he  never 
took  holy  orders  and  he  also 
seemed  to  have  doubts  about  that 
particular  theology.  Some  of  his 
diary  entries  point  to  his  deep 
personal  sense  of  "sinfulness," 


48 


perhaps  to  a  degree  unusual  for 
the  average  Christian.  It  seems  that 
such  a  deep  sense  of  sin  required 
a  deep  sense  of  religiosity.  If  so, 
it  is  possible  that  Dodgson  could 
not  imagine  a  God  who  would 
have  created  more  than  one  kind 
of  space  or  more  than  one  logic, 
when  the  Christian  God  is  com- 
monly referred  to  as  the  Absolute. 
There  can't  be  two  geometries, 
and  in  the  case  of  logic,  Kant's 
famous  mistaken  claim  that  Aristo- 
tle's logic  was  a  complete  science 
must  be  right.  Is  this  what  stopped 
Dodgson 's  unusually  creative  mind 
from  going  beyond  the  Aristotelian 
syllogistics?  This  might  be  a  good 
research  topic  for  Carrollians. 

2.  EXISTENTIAL  IMPORT 

Once  Dodgson 's  adherence  to 
Aristotelian  logic  is  set  as  a  back- 
ground, his  adherence  to  similar 
treatment  of  the  universal  categori- 
cal propositions  follows  naturally. 
The  traditional  square  of  opposi- 
tion originating  with  Aristode 
reveals  logical  relationships  among 
the  four  types  of  categorical  sen- 
tences A  (Every  S  is  P) ,  E  (No  S  is 
P),  I  (Some  S  is  P),  and  O  (Some  S 
is  not  P),  as  conceived  by  Aristode. 
The  most  controversial  and  criti- 
cized relationship  in  the  twentieth 
century  was  probably  the  relation 
of  subalternation  between  A  and 
I  (and  also  E  and  O).  Aristotle 
thought  that  if  every  S  is  P,  then 
some  S  must  be  P.  This  is  the  so- 
called  "existential  import"  of  the 
universal  (affirmative)  sentences. 
But  he  made  this  assumption  for 
a  reason,  actually  an  ontological 
reason.  There  is  a  fundamental  dif- 
ference between  Plato's  philosophy 
and  Aristotle's  philosophy.  Unlike 
his  teacher  Plato,  who  was  con- 
cerned with  ideas  and  the  abstract 
mathematical  realm,  Aristotle  was 
more  down  to  earth  and  was  con- 
cerned more  with  the  realm  inhab- 
ited by  individuals  (objects).  I'm 
not  prepared  to  say  that  Aristotle 
didn't  have  a  concept  of  the  empty 
domain  or  a  universe  of  discourse 
that  is  empty,  but  it  seems  that  his 


ontology  assumes  a  non-empty 
universe.  In  a  non-empty  universe, 
A  implies  I  would  look  natural.  If 
every  S  is  P,  then  it  should  be  true 
that  at  least  some  S  is  P.  In  the  case 
of  Aristotle,  his  ontology  enforces 
the  relation  of  subalternation,  i.e., 
the  existential  import  of  universal 
sentences. 

In  the  case  of  Dodgson,  if  he 
subscribed  to  Aristotle's  ontology 
and  assumed  that  there  could  only 
be  one  logic,  his  acceptance  of  the 
existential  import  of  universal  cat- 
egorical sentences  is  obvious.  But 
there  is  a  technical  reason  for  him 
to  assume  the  existential  import  of 
universal  categorical  sentences.  It 
has  been  touched  upon  by  Abeles 
in  highlighting  Hugh  MacColl's 
(1837-1909)  criticism  of  Dodg- 
son's  Symbolic  Logic,  Part  I,a  and  I 
shall  add  a  few  words  in  that  re- 
gard. In  the  Eighth  and  Ninth  Papers 
on  Logic,  Dodgson  asks  his  readers 
to  bear  in  mind  the  assumption: 

That  the  proposition  "all  x  are  y" 
is  the  sum  total  of  the  two  propo- 
sitions "some  x  are  yn  and  "no  x 
are  not  /'.'■ 

If  you  look  at  this  definition 
of  A,  there  is  a  surprising  lack  of 
intuitiveness,  and  it  certainly  is  not 
"natural."  I  suspect  that  this  defini- 
tion was  a  result  of  the  way  he  con- 
structed his  logic  diagrams. 

Let  us  go  to  Carroll's  biliteral 
diagrams.7  The  I  proposition  is 
given  the  following  definition: 


Now,  how  do  we  define  an  A 
proposition  such  as  "all  x  are  y"? 
All  we  have  to  do  is  to  combine 
the  above  two  diagrams  into  one: 


Some  xy  exist 
-  Some  x  are  y 
+  Some  y  are  x 

• 

It's  simple:  If  some  xy  exist,  we  put 
a  dot  in  the  upper-left  cell.  If  there 
is  no  x  at  all,  i.e.,  no  x  exists,  put 
a  circle  in  the  upper-left  cell  and 
another  in  the  upper-right  cell,  as 
below: 


No  x  exist 

o 

o 

All  x  are  y 


• 

o 

Since  all  x  are  y,  xy'  must  be 
empty;  hence,  a  circle  in  the 
upper-right  cell  is  a  must.  But  we 
still  have  to  show  that  all  x  are  y. 
In  Dodgson 's  notation,  nothing 
else  could  be  done  except  by 
putting  a  dot  in  the  upper-left 
cell.  This  would  mean  that 
everything  that  is  x  is  also  y.  The 
problem  is,  the  dot  is  an  existential 
symbol.  The  existential  import 
of  the  A  proposition  is  thus 
smuggled  in.  In  this  notation, 
there  is  no  way  the  A  proposition 
does  not  carry  some  existential 
implication  irrespective  of 
Carroll's  ontological  inclination. 
Therefore,  in  Carroll's  logic 
diagram  notation,  existential 
import  is  indeed  a  technical 
problem. 

Furthermore,  if  we  compare 
Carroll's  verbal  and  diagrammatic 
definitions  of  the  A  proposition, 
the  intuitiveness  that  the  former 
lacks  immediately  reveals  itself 
vividly  in  the  latter.  It  appears  that 
the  influence  of  his  diagrammatic 
notation  on  his  logical  investiga- 
tion cannot  be  underestimated. 

Apart  from  that,  Carroll  prob- 
ably didn't  envisage  the  close  and 
tight  relationship  between  logic 
and  mathematics.  It  is  necessary 
for  mathematics  to  handle  empty 
domains,  and  the  same  goes  for 
logic.  Nowadays,  we  know  that 
universal  propositions  do  not 
necessarily  have  any  existential 
import,  thanks  partly  to  De  Mor- 
gan's introduction  of  the  concept 
of  "universe  of  discourse,"  with 
which  we  can  specifically  indicate 
an  empty  universe,  and  partly  to 
the  introduction  of  quantifiers  by 
Peirce  and  Frege  independently. 


49 


Let  <t>  and  T  be  predicates,  x  and 
y  individual  variables,  and  the  A 
proposition  can  have  two  variants 
in  the  language  of  first-order  logic. 
If  we  restrict  our  universe  of  dis- 
course to  everything  that  is  <J>,  'Vx 
IV  would  mean  everything  (viz.  <t>- 
thing)  is  a  T-thing.  But  if  we  do  not 
restrict  our  universe  of  discourse, 
we  can  write  '  Vx  (Ox  D  Tx) '  which 
would  mean  the  same,  i.e.,  every 
O-thing  is  a  T-thing,  or,  in  more 
clumsy  wording,  for  all  things,  if 
it  is  a  O-thing,  it  is  also  a  T-thing. 
Obviously,  "All  superheroes  wear 
speedos  or  tights"  does  not  imply 
the  existence  of  some  speedo/ 
tights-wearing  superhero  (s),  for 
the  simple  reason  that  superheroes 
constitute  an  empty  domain! 

The  interesting  thing  to  be 
noticed  here  is  that  the  A  proposi- 
tion can  be  written  as  a  conditional 
(or  hyperthetical),  in  which  the 
antecedent  (protasis)  helps  to  set 
the  domain  for  the  conditional. 
Talking  about  hypothetical,  it's 
time  to  move  onto  the  last  section 
of  this  essay. 

3.  THE  HYPOTHETICAL 

What  was  Dodgson's  view  on  the 
hypothetical?  I  have  the  impres- 
sion that  Dodgson  could  not  quite 
make  up  his  mind  on  the  matter — 
that's  why  he  kept  writing  puzzles 
and  paradoxes  using  hypothetical 
sentences.  So  I'm  not  going  to 
answer  that  question  here.  Instead, 
I'll  talk  a  litde  bit  about  his  A  Dis- 
puted Point  in  Logic*  and  use  it  to 
clarify  a  few  things,  to  enhance  the 
pleasure  of  reading  the  second  set 
of  papers  in  the  presently  reviewed 
book. 

Dodgson  presented  A  Disputed 
Point  in  Logic,  dated  1894,  in  the 
following  manner: 

DP:  There  are  two  propositions, 

A  and  B. 

Let  it  be  granted  that 
If  A  is  true,  B  is  true  ...  (i) 

Let  there  be  another  Proposi- 
tion C,  such  that 
If  C  is  true,  then  if  A  is  true  B  is 
not  true  ....  (ii) 


According  to  Abeles,  "This  is 
the  first  of  a  series  of  sheets  Dodg- 
son had  printed  on  the  Barbershop 
Paradox."  This,  then,  seems  like  a 
good  place  to  begin. 

First  of  all,  this  type  of  argument 
was  nothing  new  even  in  Dodg- 
son's time.  The  Megarian  School 
of  4  BCE  was  very  fond  of  this  type 
of  argument.  A  common  method 
of  disputation  used  by  those  Mega- 
rian philosophers  was  a  combina- 
tion of  reduction  ad  absurdum  with 
conditionals  (or  hypothetical). 
If  an  opponent  made  a  claim  or 
assumption  P,  it  would  not  be  un- 
common for  a  Megarian  philoso- 
pher to  construct  an  argument  of 
the  following  form: 

MA:  If  P  then  Q,  if  P  then  ~Qj 
therefore  P  is  not  possible. 

What  the  Megarian  philoso- 
phers wanted  to  argue  was  that 
if  we  can  infer  both  'Q'  and  *~Q' 
from  'P\  'P'  cannot  be  possible; 
i.e.,  'P'cannot  be  asserted.  DP 
looks  very  much  like  a  version  of 
MA,  but  does  it  really? 

Let's  look  at  DP  one  more  time. 
First  we  have  two  propositions,  A 
and  B.  Then  we  assume  (i).  But 
what  is  (i)?  The  formulation  of  (i) 
dangerously  borders  on  a  confu- 
sion of  object  language  with  metalan- 
guage, the  same  problem  that  had 
haunted  philosophers  and  logi- 
cians since  almost  the  beginning 
of  ancient  Greek  philosophy,  until 
Tarski  and  Carnap  started  clearing 
the  muddy  waters  in  the  early  part 
of  the  twentieth  century.  Literally, 
(i)  is  a  conditional  whose  anteced- 
ent is  "A  is  true,"  and  its  conse- 
quent is  "B  is  true."  Let  us  call  this 
literal  reading  (i)': 

(i)'     If  (A  is  true),  then  (Bis 
true). 

The  original  "trick"  conceived 
by  Dodgson  was  that  (i)  was  sup- 
posed to  be: 

(i)      if  A  then  B 

in  which  A  is  true,  whereas  B 
is  also  true.  Philo  the  dialectician 
from  the  Megarian  School  had 


already  given  a  material  inter- 
pretation of  the  conditional  such 
that  a  conditional  is  construed 
as  false  where  the  antecedent  is 
true  and  the  consequent  is  false. 
When  the  antecedent  is  false, 
whether  the  consequent  is  true  or 
false  does  not  matter;  the  condi- 
tional is  construed  as  true.  And  of 
course,  where  the  antecedent  and 
the  consequent  are  both  true,  the 
conditional  is  construed  as  true. 
Now  in  (i),  Dodgson  wanted  to 
insist  that  A  be  true  and  B  be  true 
among  the  three  possible  cases 
in  which  (i)  can  be  construed  as 
true.  This  is  one  source  of  the 
trouble. 

However,  under  our  literal  in- 
terpretation, the  two  conditionals 
can  be  laid  out  as  follows: 

(i) '     If  (A  is  true) ,  then  (B  is 
true). 

(ii)'    If  (C  is  true),  then  [if  (A 
is  true),  then  (B  is  not  true)]. 

Let  us  introduce  a  "1"  to  stand 
for  true  and  a  "0"  to  stand  for  not 
true,  so  that  the  following  pre- 
sentation will  be  clear.  We  now 
know  that  a  conditional  can  be 
construed  as  true  in  three  cases, 
so  (i)'  can  have  a  "1"  when  we  as- 
sign a  "0"  to  both  (A  is  true)  and 
(Bis  true).9 

Next,  we  move  on  to  the  sub- 
conditional  of  (ii)',  i.e.,  [if  (A  is 
true),  then  (B  is  not  true)].  Since 
we  have  assigned  a  0  to  (A  is  true) 
in  (i)',  we  assign  the  same  value 
(that  is,  0)  to  (A  is  true)  in  (ii)'. 
Since  (B  is  true)  in  (i)'  is  assigned 
a  0,  we  cannot  assign  the  same 
value  to  (B  is  not  true)  in  (ii)'; 
instead,  we  give  it  a  1.  It  means 
that  for  the  subconditional  of  (ii) 
',  the  antecedent  has  a  0,  and  the 
consequent  has  a  1;  hence,  the 
entire  subconditional  should  be 
assigned  a  1. 

Since  the  subconditional  is  the 
consequent  of  (ii)'  and  it  has  the 
value  1,  the  entire  (ii)'  has  to  be 
assigned  a  1  for  the  same  reason, 
irrespective  of  the  truth  value 
of  its  antecedent,  which  is  (C  is 
true). 


50 


The  funny  thing  is  that  the  truth 
values  of  A,  B,  and  C  may  be  irrel- 
evant under  our  literal  interpreta- 
tion. If  Dodgson  wanted  DP  to  be 
a  sort  of  logical  puzzle,  a  careful 
reformulation  would  be  a  start. 

1    Edna  E.  Kramer.  The  Nature  and 
Growth  of  Modern  Mathematics. 
Princeton  University  Press,  1981, 
Chapter  3.  It  is  said  that  the 
mathematical  giant  Johann  Carl 
Friedrich  Gauss  (1777-1855) 
discovered  similar  results  to  those  of 
Lobachevsky  and  Bolyai.  If  you  wish 
to  push  further,  there  was  an  Italian 
priest,  Girolamo  Saccheri  (1667- 
1733),  who  actually  discovered 
Lobachevskian  geometry  without 
knowing  it  in  the  course  of  trying  to 
prove  Euclid's  parallel  postulate  in 
1733. 

8  Alberto  Coffa.  "From  Geometry 
to  Tolerance:  Sources  of 
Conventionalism  in  Nineteenth- 
Century  Geometry,"  in  Robert 
Colodny,  ed.  From  Quarks  to  Quasars: 
Philosophical  Problems  of  Modern 
Physics.  University  of  Pittsburg 
Series,  Vol  7,  Pittsburgh:  Pittsburgh 
University  Press,  3-70. 

:!    C.  I.  Lewis.  A  Survey  of  Symbolic 
Logic  (originally  published  by  the 
University  of  California  Press  in 
1918).  Dover  Publications,  Inc., 
1960,  78. 

1    Sen  Wong.  Hijacking  Alice: 

Underground  Logic  and  Mirror-image 
Language,  in  Chinese  and  to  be 
published  in  2011. 

5  The  Logic  Pamphlets  of  Charles 
Lutwidge  Dodgson  and  Related  Pieces, 
ed.  Francine  F.  Abeles,  Vol  4  of 
The  Pamphlets  of  Lewis  Carroll.  NY: 
The  Lewis  Carroll  Society  of  North 
America,  2010,  5. 

6  Ibid.,  228.  There  is  a  similar 
assumption  concerning  E  and  O 
sentences.  I  shall  talk  only  about  the 
A  and  I  case  as  an  example. 

7  Ibid.  I  assume  that  the  reader 
is  familiar  with  Carroll's  logic 
diagrams;  if  not,  pages  54—55  of 
The  Logic  Pamphlets  would  suffice  for 
an  understanding  of  the  coming 
explanation  in  this  section  of  the 
paper. 

K    The  Logic  Pamphlets,  112. 

9  We  are  considering  only  one 
combination  of  truth  values,  viz. 
antecedent  (0)  and  consequent  (1), 
as  an  example  in  our  discussion. 


FORGOTTEN  THE  ENGLISH? 

Alice  au  pays  des  merveilles 

Lewis  Carroll 

Illustrated  by  Alain  Gauthier 

Translated  by  Jacques  Papy 

Rageot  Editeur 

1991 

ISBN:  2700211529 

Alice  au  pays  des  merveilles 

Lewis  Carroll 

Illustrated  by  Rebecca  Dautremer 

Translated  by  Sophie  Koechlin 

Hachette/Livre/ 

Gautier  Languereau 

2010 

ISBN:  2013933762 

Andrew  Ogus 

Approaching  a  translation  of  a 
book  one  knows  well  in  one's  na- 
tive tongue  with  only  a  rudimen- 
tary knowledge  of  the  other  lan- 
guage is  almost  like  a  dream;  the 
scenes  are  familiar,  the  characters 
recognizable,  yet  everything  is  new; 
we  grope  for  meaning  and  find  it 
in  memory.  Alas,  though  myjunior 
high  school  crush  on  the  beautiful 
Mme.  Bass  carried  me  far  in  higher 
grades,  my  grasp  of  French  is  now 
insufficient  to  make  a  good  com- 
parison of  these  two  translations  of 


Alain  Gauthier 's  elegant  Cheshire  Cat.  Note  the 
equally  elegant  flamingo. 


Wonderland.  So  I  will  skip  over  the 
conversations  and  concentrate  on 
the  pictures. 

Freed  from  Anglo-Saxon  at- 
titudes, Alain  Gauthier  plays 
freely  with  the  text,  creating  ef- 
fective, dreamlike  conjunctions 
of  characters  and  ideas  (though 
I  don't  know  exactly  what  they 
are).  His  adult  Alice  floats  naked 
but  shod  in  the  arms  of  the  Hat- 
ter, Hare,  and  Dormouse;  em- 
braces the  Caterpillar  in  one  of 
the  few  in-text  sketches;  wears 
a  bathing  to  dance  in  the  arms 
of  a  louche,  seductive  Lobster 
with  seeing  eye  claws;  moons  the 
King  and  Queen  and  their  jurors. 
The  Three  of  Clubs  is  painting 
a  Mona  Lisa-like  portrait  of  our 
heroine,  delicately  reddening 
the  roses  that  turn  his  painting 
into  a  playing  card;  the  numer- 
als 5  and  7  are  incorporated  into 
his  brilliantly  colored  doublet. 
The  full-page  illustrations  are 
sharp,  flat,  surreal,  and  almost 
completely  satisfying.  Some  situa- 
tions rate  more  than  one  picture, 
the  first  seeming  to  spring  from 
Alice's  mind,  only  to  be  replaced 
with  a  disappointing  reality.  Thus 
the  Dormouse  initially  appears 
with  a  remarkable  resemblance 
to  Mickey  Mouse,  but  a  few  pages 
later,  at  the  tea  table,  he  is  "real," 
though  with  a  catlike  face.  A  few 
line  drawings  in  bright  colors 
break  up  the  double-columned, 
closely  set  type  here  and  there. 

Like  Tenniel,  Rebecca  Dau- 
tremer bases  her  Wonderland 
firmly  in  reality — but  the  reality 
of  a  dream,  where  impossible 
situations  become  possible  and 
ordinary.  Her  Alice,  recogniz- 
ably based  on  Carroll's  photos 
of  the  child  Alice  Liddell,  moves 
through  a  gorgeously  painted 
Wonderland  of  rich,  suggestive 
background  color  and  rich,  sug- 
gestive background  architecture. 
Look  for  the  telling  details:  a  sign 
advertising  croquet,  an  observant 


51 


ant.  The  hall  of  the  Pool  of  Tears 
looks  like  an  old  factory,  with  beau- 
tiful arching  roofs  and  numbered 
doors;  Alice  almost  bursts  out 
of  a  flimsy  summer  porch  in  the 
White  Rabbit's  house;  the  porcine 
Duchess's  kitchen  is  a  shambles  of 
toys,  books,  and  utensils.  The  Tea 
Party  is  held  under  a  glass  canopy 
dangling  with  tea  bags  carefully 
labeled  in  French,  but  the  "No 
Fishing/Swimming/Ice  Skating/ 
Picnicking"  sign  in  the  scene  of  the 
fleeing  Caucus  racers  is  in  English. 

Every  aspect  of  this  book  is  a 
pleasure,  even  with  a  limited  grasp 
of  the  language.  The  type  is  ele- 
gant, but  (my  only  caveat)  the  text 
page  is  a  bit  wide.  The  full-page  or 
full-spread  illustrations  are  punctu- 
ated with  delightful  monochrome 
drawings,  charming  character 
studies  that  sometimes  morph  into 
storyboards,  such  as  the  transition 
of  the  baby  into  the  pig  or  Bill's 
flight  observed.  Alice's  various 
instructions  to  eat  or  drink  are  set 
off  in  pretty  frames  that  add  to  the 
charm  of  the  text.  This  is  an  Alice  I 
will  return  to  again  and  again. 


/ 


The  Pre-Raphaelite  Lens: 

British  Photography  and 

Painting,  1848-1875. 

Waggoner,  Diane,  et  al. 

Washington  DC:  Nadonal 

Gallery  of  Art,  2010. 

$65.00 

ISBN:  978-1848220676 

Clare  Imholtz 

Victorian  painting  and  photography 
developed  and  prospered  by  learn- 
ing from  each  other's  virtues.  This 
stunning  book  reproduces  more 
than  125  high-quality  full-page 
photographs  and  paintings  from 
the  third  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  to  demonstrate  how  the 
new  art  of  photography  directed 
the  Pre-Raphaelite  painters  toward 
realism  and  modernity,  and  how  the 
Pre-Raphaelites  nudged  photogra- 
phers to  seek  artistry  rather  than 
provide  just  bare  representation  of 
a  subject.  The  book's  lead  author, 
Diane  Waggoner,  is  an  associate 
curator  of  photographs  at  the  Na- 
tional Gallery  of  Art  and  a  Carroll 
scholar,  who  addressed  our  Society 
in  our  spring  2006  meeting  at  USC. 


\ 


V 


M    I 


■ 


i 


rL  f^ 


H 


Sic  transit  Bill  in  Rebecca  Dautremer's  storyboard  like  illustration. 


In  her  chapter  on  portraiture, 
Waggoner  examines  Dodgson's 
photographs  and  those  of  Julia 
Margaret  Cameron,  David  Wilkie 
Wynfield  (the  first  to  make  pho- 
tographs slightly  out  of  focus) , 
and  other  photographers.  The 
chapter  centers  on  the  alluring 
Ellen  Terry,  particularly  her  hus- 
band G.  F.  Watts's  lovely  painting 
of  her,  The  Choosing — the  one 
wonderful  product  of  their  short 
(and  probably  unconsummated) 
marriage — and  how  it  influenced 
both  Dodgson  and  Cameron, 
despite  their  antithetical  styles. 

While  Dodgson  gets  his  due, 
Cameron  is  the  star.  The  power 
and  beauty  of  her  intimate  close- 
ups — the  "large  heads"  that 
Dodgson  so  objected  to,  some- 
times (though  not  always)  out  of 
focus  (which  he  also  disliked) — 
cannot  be  denied.  I  count  twenty- 
five  photographs  by  Cameron  in 
this  book  and  nine  by  Dodgson. 
On  the  dust  jacket,  we  see  Cam- 
eron's striking  photograph  of 
Alice  Liddell  as  Pomona,  goddess 
of  fruit  and  fruitfulness,  her  hair 
blending  into  the  lush  foliage 
behind  her.  Alice  stares  straight- 
forwardly at  the  camera,  serious 
now  but  still  as  much  in  com- 
mand as  when  she  was  Dodgson's 
Beggar  Maid  some  14  years  before. 
Alice's  sister  Edith  was  possibly 
the  sitter  for  a  related  Cameron 
photograph,  The  Sunflower. 

The  book  includes  a  marvel- 
ous section  on  early  nature  pho- 
tography, including  some  by  little- 
known  pioneering  artists.  It  was 
produced  to  accompany  the  ex- 
quisite exhibition,  The  Pre-Rapha- 
elite Lens:  British  Photography  and 
Painting,  1848-1875  (Oct  2010- 
January  2011)  at  the  National 
Gallery  of  Art,  Washington  DC, 
and  later  at  Paris's  Muse  d'Orsay 
(March-May  201 1)  under  the 
more  romantic  title  Une  ballade 
d'Amour  et  de  Mort,  referencing  no 
doubt  the  Victorian  fondness  for 
narrative  photography. 


52 


ART  &  ILLUSTRATION 

Karen  Mortillaro  has  been 
making  bronze  sculptures 
of  Carroll  characters  for 
years,  but  her  new  series 
of  each  of  AAJWs  twelve 
chapters  is  especially  ex- 
citing. She  has  used  the 
ancient  concept  of  ana- 
morphia  to  translate  flat 
images  into  three-dimen- 
sions, creating  what  she 
calls  anemographic  sculp- 
tural illustrations.  They 
were  on  display  at  one  of  the  many 
regular  Alice-related  exhibits  at  the 
Arne  Nixon  Center  for  the  Study 
of  Children's  Literature  in  Fresno, 
CA,  this  one  called  Down  the  Rabbit 
Hole  with  Leiuis  Carroll  and  Leonard 
Weisgard,  which  ran  September  16 
to  October  26,  2011.  The  exhibit 
also  featured  Alice-themed  art 
in  Peanuts  by  Charles  Schulz  and 
original  art  from  uber-Carrollian 
Byron  Sewell. 

Argentinian  artist  Norberto  Conti 
has  an  unlikely  trio  of  muses: 
Alice,  Bobby  Fischer,  and  quantum 
physics.  Together  they  inspire  even 
more  unlikely  paintings  in  which  a 
litde  girl  in  a  blue  dress,  an  anx- 
ious-looking chess  player,  and 
Schrodinger's  cat  wander  around 
plunging  landscapes  of  quantum 
foam.  Hard  to  imagine  until  you 
see  it.  Conti's  work  was  exhibited 
at  the  Los  Angeles  Art  Show  by  the 
Ward  Nasse  Gallery  in  January. 

The  Jeff  Charbonneau  and  Eliza 
French  photography  exhibit  in 
San  Francisco  was  said,  by  the  San 
Francisco  Chronicle,  to  be  "Lewis 
Carroll  ...  inspired."  The  exhibit, 
called  Circumspect,  was  also  de- 
scribed by  Photograph  magazine  as 
"Fellini's  take  on  Lewis  Carroll." 
And  Charbonneau  says:  "Our 
vision  of  the  solar  system  and  the 
universe  is  based  on  a  very  simple 
idea:  How  would  you  view  it  as  a 
child  or  see  it  in  a  tangible  form 
that  you  can  interact  with?"  The 
art  looks  lovely,  even  if  the  reladon 
to  Carroll  is  merely  high-concept. 
(Could  any  art  featuring  girls  in 
wondrous  lands  be  considered  in 


(jowetv/to/tt/e/t/A' 


some  way  related  to  Carroll?) 
Circumspect  ran  through  Septem- 
ber 14,  2011,  at  E6  Gallery. 

Fine  bronze  sculptures  based  on 
Tenniel's  illustrations  were  exhib- 
ited at  the  UK's  Hampton  Court 
Flower  Show  in  July.  Editions  of 
the  figures  cast  using  the  tradi- 
tional lost-wax  method  are  avail- 
able from  the  Robert  James  Work- 
shop, where  Robert  (Bob  Ellis) 
and  James  (Jim  Coplestone)  cre- 
ate storybook  characters  and  origi- 
nal commissions  for  enchanted 
gardens. 

"These  Alices  by  Katarzyna  Widma- 
nska  are  amongst  the  nicer  I  have 
met  recently,"  writes  Adriana 
Peliano  of  Brazil's  Lewis  Carroll 
Society  on  one  of  her  many  excel- 
lent blogs.  It's  true,  we  also  want  to 
meet  Widmanska's  Alices.  "They 
are  intense  [and]  recreate  the 
story  in  a  contemporary  perspec- 
tive keeping  a  strong  dialogue 
between  our  well  known  refer- 


ences and  the  singular 
universe  of  the  artist.  It 
plays  with  identity  and 
performance,  with  the 
possibilides  of  stage  and 
fashion  photography  to 
capture  imagination  with 
its  subtleties."  One  of  them 
is  of  a  topless  Alice  in  a 
creepy  rabbit  mask,  whom 
we'd  like  to  meet,  so  long 
as  it's  not  in  a  dark  alley. 

Ohio-based  artist  Kollar 
Anderson  is  working  on  a  series  of 
paintings  called  The  Wasp  in  the 
Wig.  The  bright  acrylic  creations 
are  inspired  by  Carroll  "but,  like 
the  Wasp,  include  situations  that 
could  exist  in  Wonderland,  but 
did  not  make  it  into  the  book." 
Paintings  include  "Phyxiated,"  a 
vision  of  the  Queen  of  Hearts  in 
her  younger  days,  and  "Cheshire 
Tins,"  portraits  of  cats  on  50  re- 
cycled cat  food  tins.  Anderson 
exhibited  in  The  Hive  Gallery  and 
Studios  in  Los  Angeles  in  March. 

A  handsome  oil-on-canvas  portrait 
of  Lewis  Carroll  was  painted  by 
Manchester,  UK,  artist  Mike 
Lopuszansky.  The  painting  now 
resides  in  a  private  collection  in 
Daresbury — "the  best  possible 
place  for  it"  notes  the  unbiased 
Daresbury  Chronicle — but  postcards 
are  available  for  sale,  100  for  £20. 

Maggie  Taylor's  beautiful  altered 
digital  photography  was  on  dis- 
play in  Carlsbad,  CA,  at  the  Wil- 
liam D.  Cannon  Art  Gallery  from 
July  17  through  September  9.  "I 
had  been  doing  some  digital  work 
with  rabbits,  holes  in  the  ground, 
and  Victorian  children,"  she  told 
the  North  County  Times  at  her  stu- 
dio in  Gainesville,  Florida.  "Sev- 
eral people  remarked  that  it  re- 
minded them  of  'Alice  in  Won- 
derland.' So  I  started  to  do  a  few 
images  like  that,  but  I  didn't  know 
how  much  it  would  take  over.  Now 
it's  three  years  and  45  images 
later."  That's  what  happens  when 
you  follow  rabbits. 


53 


* 

ARTICLES  &  ACADEMIA 

Do  adults  enjoy  AA/Wbecause  it  is 
"a  symbolic  retreat  from  the  disap- 
pointment of  reality"?  Dr.  Louise 
Joy  of  the  University  of  Cambridge 
thinks  so.  "Books  such  as  Lewis 
Carroll's  Alice  in  Wonderland  and 
Roald  Dahl's/araes  and  the  Giant 
Peach  offer  a  world  where  self- 
consciousness  is  overthrown  and 
relationships  are  straightforward," 
Joy  said,  "but  relationships  in  the 
real  adult  world  are  often  fraught 
by  miscommunication  and  the 
impossibility  of  understanding  one 
another  properly."  (Sounds  a  lot 
like  Wonderland  to  us!)  Joy's  re- 
search was  discussed  in  a  number 
of  UK  newspapers  in  October  and 
will  appear  in  her  forthcoming 
book  Literature's  Children. 

Arthur  Rackham  illustrated  AATW 
in  1907.  Our  friends  over  at  the 
Arthur  Rackham  Society  had  a  few 
articles  about  Carroll  in  Issue  No. 
45  (April  2011)  oi  the  Journal  of  the 
Arthur  Rackham  Society  (JARS). 
"Rackham 's  Mice  and  a  Few  Rats — 
Part  5"  by  Dorothy  Gibbs  covered 
Rackham 's  Pool  of  Tears,  Caucus 
Race,  and  Trial  Scene,  and  "Illus- 
trators of  Alice"  by  Chris  Tomasze- 
wski  had  a  nice  spread  of  23  illus- 
trations. Membership  to  the  Arthur 
Rackham  Society  is  $20  a  year. 

On  November  17,  Dr.  Francine  F. 
Abeles  gave  a  talk  at  Montclair 
State  University  in  NJ  titled,  "Auto- 
mated Deduction  Techniques  in 
Lewis  Carroll's  Symbolic  Logic." 
She  has  also  published  a  paper  in 
the  journal  Linear  Algebra  and  its 
Applications  titled  "Nineteenth 
Century  Roots  of  Quasidetermi- 
nants,"  which  includes  a  discussion 
of  Dodgson's  condensation  algo- 
rithm. The  citation  is:  v.  435,  2011, 
pp.  1019-1024. 

Alvy  Ray  Smith,  Fellow  of  the 
American  Society  of  Genealogists, 
has  created  an  extensive  genealogy 
of  Reginald  Hargreaves  (husband 
of  Alice  Liddell)  in  web-book  form. 
The  document  "looks  like  a  book 


but  acts  like  a  web  page."  Within  it, 
information  on  five  generations  of 
Hargreaves  can  be  navigated  via 
hyperlinks.  The  latest  version  of 
the  ongoing  work  can  be  down- 
loaded from  alvyray.com. 

If  you  can't  make  it  to  the  Morgan 
Library  in  New  York,  but  you  still 
want  to  see  the  letter  Lewis  Carroll 
sent  to  illustrator  Harry  Furniss 
that  contains  Carroll's  sketch  of  an 
albatross  turning  into  a  postage 
stamp  (from  "The  Mad  Gardener's 
Song"  in  Sylvie  and  Bruno) ,  you 
need  go  no  further  than  the  Huff 
ington  Post.  Manuscripts  cataloger 
Carolyn  Vega  posted  it  there  on 
June  7  with  a  short  essay.  "I'm 
aware  it's  an  almost  impossible  sub- 
ject!" wrote  Carroll  to  Furniss.  "But 
don't  you  think  there  is  a  certain 
zest  in  trying  impossibilities?" 
Furniss  responded  by  vowing  never 
to  work  with  Carroll  again. 

An  account  of  Dame  Gillian  Beer's 
lecture  "Alice  in  Time,"  delivered 
at  the  Radcliffe  Institute  for  Ad- 
vanced Study  at  Harvard  on  March 
24,  2011,  was  published  in  the 
Summer  2011  edition  of  the  Rad- 
cliffe Magazine. 

The  UK's  Guardian  newspaper  has 
investigated  the  dubious  connec- 
tion between  Salvador  Dalf  and  the 
proliferation  of  bronze  sculptures 
sold  under  his  name.  These  in- 
clude the  famous  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land bronze,  now  known  to  have 
been  created  after  Dalf's  death, 
although  based  on  one  of  his  draw- 
ings. In  an  article  titled  "The  'al- 
most' Dalf  trade"  published  June  3, 
the  Guardian  quoted  the  frvistrated 
head  of  the  Salvador  Dalf  Founda- 
tion: "You  look  at  a  sculpture  and 
you  don't  know  what  you  are  see- 
ing— is  it  one  out  of  10,  or  300  in 
three  different  patinas,  so  it's  900? 
And  did  Dalf  make  it  or  not,  or  is  it 
made  by  a  third  person  with  Dalf's 
permission  or  not?" 

The  cover  feature  in  the  August 
2011  Princeton  Magazine  by  Stuart 
Mitchner,  called  "Alice's  American 
Cousin,"  was  about  author  Joyce 


Carol  Oates's  lifelong  love  of 
Alice.  Included  in  the  magazine  is 
an  image  of  LCSNA  member 
Dallas  Piotrowski's  Wonderland, 
which  hangs  in  JCO's  study  and 
portrays  her  as  Alice  opening  out 
like  a  telescope. 

Two  of  our  international  mem- 
bers in  the  Far  East  have  pub- 
lished books  on  Carroll.  In  Seoul, 
Kang  Hoon  Lee  published  a  Ko- 
rean language  "Study  of  Alice  in 
Wonderland,"  and  in  Japan,  the 
Keizai-Shirin  (Hosei  University  Eco- 
nomic Review)  was  a  special  issue 
"in  honor  of  Professor  Kimie 
Kusumoto's  retirement."  The 
Professor  (not  the  Other  Profes- 
sor) is  a  longtime  LCSNA  mem- 
ber, and  the  review  contained 
Carrollian  articles  by  LCSNA 
members  Edward  Wakeling,  Au- 
gust Imholtz,  Matthew  Demakos, 
Yoshiyuki  Momma,  and  Clare 
Imholtz. 

"Return  to  Wonderland"  by  Al- 
berto Manguel,  published  in  The 
Threepenny  Review  126,  Summer 
2011,  discusses  the  place  of  the 
Alice  books  in  our  lives.  Manguel 
is  a  prolific  writer,  editor,  and 
book  collector  whose  book-,  The 
Dictionary  of  Imaginary  Places,  was 
a  travel  guide  to  fantastical  places 
including  Oz,  Atlantis,  and  Won- 
derland. 

"My  name  means  the  shape  I 
am — and  a  good  handsome  shape 
it  is,  too."  Linguists  have  been 
ruminating  on  Humpy  Dumpty's 
theories  for  over  a  century.  Now, 
his  discussion  about  words'  mean- 
ing is  being  used  by  scientists  in 
conjunction  with  new  studies 
about  an  innate  connection  be- 
tween sounds  and  representation. 
David  Robson's  article  in  the  July 
16,  201 1,  issue  of  Neiv  Scientist, 
"Kiki  or  bouba?  In  search  of  lan- 
guage's missing  link,"  quotes  our 
handsomely  rotund  friend  at 
length  to  discuss  studies  that  "sug- 
gest that  we  seem  instinctively  to 
link  certain  sounds  with  particular 
sensor)'  perceptions." 


54 


In  September  The  Spectator  maga- 
zine ran  a  competition  for  a  poem 
that  began  "Twas  brillig  .  .  ."  and 
continued  in  the  style  of  Carroll, 
using  all  new  neologisms.  The 
competition  was  won  by  one  Ray 
Kelley  with  a  poem  that  began 
"Twas  brillig,  and  the  benneteaux 
/  Did  fish  and  tsonga  in  the  beck; 
/  All  murray  were  the  delpotros,  / 
Primed  to  outstepanek."  Runners- 
up  included  Mary  Holtby  ("Twas 
brillig,  and  the  Attendick  /  Was 
wambling  in  the  droozy  reeds.  .  .") 
and  Brian  Murdoch  ("Twas  brillig, 
and  the  harry  potts  /  Did  dore  and 
dumble  in  the  print.  .  .").  A  cromu- 
lent  effort  by  all. 

And  finally,  it's  time  for  your  semi- 
annual New  Yorker  magazine  Alice- 
reference  roundup.  On  May  9, 
Jane  Fonda  was  described  as  "a 
kind  of  sexual  Alice  in  Wonderland 
of  the  future"  by  Roger  Vadim,  and 
Donald  Trump  was  drawn  as  the 
Cheshire  Cat.  The  June  27  issue 
contained  an  article  about  Walmart 
heiress  Alice  Walton's  art  museum 
in  the  Ozarks  called  "Alice's  Won- 
derland." "How  to  Be  Good"  (Sep- 
tember 7)  by  Larissa  MacFarquhar 
mentioned  Oxford  philosopher 
Derek  Parfit's  small  house  contain- 
ing "tiny,  twisting  staircases  like 
Alice  in  Wonderland."  And  don't 
miss  Jhumpa  Lahiri's  story  (June 
13)  "Trading  Stories:  Notes  from 
an  Apprenticeship,"  which  con- 
tains this  excellent  sentence:  "Like 
the  labels  on  the  cakes  and  bottles 
that  Alice  discovered  under- 
ground, the  essential  gift  of  my 
award  was  that  it  spoke  to  me  in 
the  imperative;  for  the  first  time,  a 
voice  in  my  head  said,  'Do  this.'" 
Thanks  to  our  spies  who  would 
never  miss  a  Carroll  reference  in 
the  New  Yorker. 


BOOKS 

Courteous  Helen  Smith,  author  of 
Alison  Wonderland  (AmazonEncore, 
August  2011),  announced  the  fol- 
lowing: "I  have  to  warn  Lewis  Car- 
roll fans  that  any  direct  reference 
to  his  work  in  my  book  begins  and 


ends  with  the  pun  in  the  title,  but  I 
have  no  doubt  that  I  have  been  in- 
fluenced by  everything  I  have  ever 
read,  including  his  books."  Her 
book,  about  a  woman  who  takes  a 
job  at  the  same  all-female  detective 
agency  she  hired  to  trap  her  cheat- 
ing husband,  has  been  positively 
reviewed. 

There's  a  new  history  of  pen  names 
out  by  Carmela  Ciuraru  (real 
name?)  called  Norn  de Plume:  A 
(Secret)  History  of  Pseudonyms 
($24.99).  The  story  of  Lewis  Car- 
roll's name  is  apparently  given 
prominent  placement. 

The  latest  titles  from  the  indefati- 
gable Evertype  Publishing  include 
Byron  W.  Sewell's  Alix's  Adventures 
in  Wonderland  (ISBN  978-190480 
8725)  and  Alopk's  Adventures  in 
Goatland  (ISBN  978-1-90480876-3), 
a  new  edition  of  Florence  Adele 
Evans's  Alice's  Adventures  in  Picture- 
land  (ISBN  978-1904808633),  and 
a  Scots  translation  of  AATW  ( ISBN 
978-1904808640).  Scots  is  a  Ger- 
manic language  closely  related  to 
Scottish  Standard  English.  The 
translation  is  by  Sandy  Fleming, 
who  says  of  it,  "As  faur  as  I  ken,  this 
beuk  sets  oot  the  first  translation  o 
Ailice's  Aventurs  in  Wunnerland  intae 
Scots." 

Who  knows  what  evil  lurks  in  the 
hearts  of  men?  THE  SHADOW 
KNOWS!  Sanctum  Books,  which 
republishes  classic  noir  pulps, 
prints  collections  of  The  Shadow 
magazine.  In  the  third  story  in  vol. 
50,  The  Man  from  Shanghai  and 
Other  Thrillers,"  "Lamont  Cranston 
and  Joe  Cardona  go  undercover  as 
Tweedledee  and  Tweedledum  to 
investigate  murders  at  an  Alice  in 
Wonderland  ball  in  Bruce  Elliott's 
Jabberwocky Thrust'"  (1947). 

A  fine  new  facsimile  of  AA/Willus- 
trated  by  Harry  Rountree  has  been 
released  by  Dover  Publisher's  Calla 
Editions  ($40).  The  book  has  been 
freshly  typeset  but  faithfully  repro- 
duces all  92  of  Rountree 's  original 
watercolors. 


A  new  "brain-boosting"  book  by 
Robert  Quine  and  John  Nolan 
has  an  amusing  title:  106  Impos- 
sible Things  Before  Breakfast 
($14.95).  The  question  is,  is  it 
possible  to  do  that  many  impos- 
sible things  without  pushing 
breakfast  back  at  least  to  brunch? 

Clare  Imholz  thought  she  discov- 
ered the  shortest  adaptation  of 
AA/W  Dalmation  Press's  new 
Disney  Alice  in  Wonderland  ($1, 
available  at  Target) .  It's  2.5  by  3 
inches  (a  very  good  size  indeed) 
and  only  38  words  long.  It  begins 
"Alice  followed  the  White  Rabbit 
into  a  strange  world,"  and  you're 
already  24%  done.  However,  we 
found  a  shorter  version — 29 
words  long! — in  Jason  Huffs 
book  AutoSummarize.  For  compari- 
son, that  one  begins,  "Poor  Alice! 
Alice  felt  dreadfully  puzzled." 

Enigmas  and  Riddles  in  Literature, 
by  Eleanor  Cook  (Cambridge 
University  Press,  2006),  offers 
both  a  history  and  an  anatomy  of 
the  riddle.  Chapter  7  is  titled 
"Case  Study  II.  Mapping  Riddles: 
Lewis  Carroll  and  the  Alice 
Books."  Why  we  did  not  mention 
the  book  in  2006  is  an  enigma 
not  examined  in  this  book. 

A  very  thorough  graphic  noveliza- 
tion  called  The  Complete  Alice  in 
Wonderland — 186  full-color 
pages — was  published  last  year  by 
Dynamite  Entertainment.  The 
adaptation  was  written  by  John 
Reppion  and  Leah  Moore,  and 
lest  it  be  anything  but  completely 
complete,  they  even  included 
"The  Wasp  in  a  Wig"  chapter. 

If  the  novel  Alice  in  Zombieland 
didn't  satisfy  your  taste  for  brains, 
there's  now  also  a  new  comic 
called  Zombie  Fairy  Tales,  zombiefy- 
ing  beloved  classics  such  as  "Little 
Dead  Riding  Hood,"  "Moldy- 
locks,"  and,  of  course,  "Alice  in 
Undead-land." 

The  front  cover  for  the  new  pa- 
perback edition  of  Rethinking 
Maps:  New  Frontiers  in  Cartographic 


55 


Theory  (Routledge,  $44.95,  greatly 
reduced  from  the  $150.00  hard- 
cover edition)  pays  homage  to 
Henry  Holiday's  famous  "Ocean- 
Chart"  illustration  for  The  Hunting 
of  the  Snark  (1876).  The  title  of  the 
book  is  right  smack  in  the  center 
of  the  "perfect  and  absolute 
blank" — if  only  Holiday  had 
thought  to  put  something  inside  of 
the  blank! 

Both  Babel  Tower  (Random  House, 
1996)  and  its  sequel,  A  Whistling 
Woman  (Random  House,  New 
York,  2002),  by  A.  S.  Byatt,  contain 
many  Carrollian  references.  In  the 
latter,  the  heroine  even  becomes 
the  host  of  a  television  show  called 
"Through  the  Looking-Glass,"  in 
which  animated  Tenniel  figures 
scamper  about  the  screen  while 
she  conducts  interviews. 


* 


EVENTS,  EXHIBITS 
&  PLACES 

Events  were  held  in  seven  conti- 
nents to  honor  the  legacy  of  Mar- 
tin Gardner  with  the  second  an- 
nual Celebration  of  Mind.  People 
gathered  to  share  mathematical 
conundrums,  magic  tricks,  and 
memories  of  Gardner  on  or 
around  October  21 — what  would 
have  been  his  97th  birthday. 

Libya  has  been  no  tea  party  this 
year,  but  press  photos  from  Gad- 
dafi's stormed  compound  revealed 
some  unexpected  tea  cups:  a  mad 
tea  cup  ride — a  mini  version  of 
Disneyland's  iconic  attraction — was 
discovered  in  the  back  yard,  along 
with  other  abandoned  fairground 
rides  once  intended  for  the  de- 


posed dictator's  grandchildren.  Or 
was  it  Gaddafi  himself  who  liked  to 
go  for  the  odd  spin?  Libyan  Carrol- 
lians  will  focus  more  on  the  apt- 
ness of  their  late  dictator  being 
hoist  upon  his  own  "Sentence 
first — verdict  afterwards"  petard. 

Lynne  Truss,  author  of  the  best- 
selling  grammar-romp  Eats,  Shoots 
and  Leaves,  spoke  of  her  lifelong 
fondness  for  Lewis  Carroll  on  the 
BBC  Radio  4  program  Great  Lives. 
Truss  included  Carroll  as  a  charac- 
ter in  her  2010  novel  Tennyson's 
Gift.  The  interview  also  featured 
Robin  Wilson,  author  of  Lewis 
Carroll  in  Numberland.  You  can  still 
listen  to  the  half-hour  program  on 
the  BBC  iPlayer  website. 

"Further  Adventures  in  Wonder- 
land: The  Afterlife  of  Alice,"  a 
one-day  interdisciplinary  confer- 
ence, will  be  held  in  Manchester, 
UK,  on  December  1  this  year.  The 
plenary  paper  will  be  given  by  Dr. 
Will  Brooker,  Reader  and  Director 
of  Research  in  Film  and  Television 
at  Kingston  University,  London. 
The  conference  is  being  held  in 
association  with  the  Journey  through 
Wonderland:  Alice  in  Multi-Media 
exhibition  at  The  Portico  Library, 
Manchester,  running  from  October 
7  to  November  30. 

"This  tea  party  serves  up  relax- 
ation, not  politics"  was  the  head- 
line of  a  story  in  the  business  sec- 
tion of  the  Napa  Valley  Register,  June 
7,  2011.  The  story  featured  two 
ladies  from  Napa  County  who  will 
put  on  tea  parties  in  the  hostess's 
home.  Their  business  is  called 
Rose  and  the  Nightingale  and  is 
based  in  American  Canyon,  CA. 

There  was  a  one-day  meeting  ex- 
ploring C.  L.  Dodgson's  interests 
in  and  contributions  to  science, 
organized  by  the  UK  Lewis  Carroll 
Society's  chairman,  Mark  Richards. 
The  event  was  held  at  the  London 
School  of  Economics  on  August  17. 
There's  more  information  about 
the  meeting  from  Dr.  Fran  Abeles 
on  page  43,  and  the  website  www. 


lewiscarrollmanofscience.com  has 
images  of  the  speakers,  including 
Fran  Abeles  and  Edward  Wakel- 
ing,  amongst  others. 

If  you  receive  Google  News  Alerts 
for  "Lewis  Carroll,"  as  we  do,  you 
may  begin  to  wonder  why  our 
favorite  author  "dropped  back  to 
pass,  but  never  had  a  chance  as 
Jerod  Maddox  came  flying  in  on 
the  back  side  and  sacked  him  to 
end  the  half."  Lewis  Carroll  is  the 
name  of  the  quarterback  for  the 
Geneva  County  Bulldogs,  a  varsity 
football  team  in  Hartville,  Ala- 
bama. Keep  playing,  Lewis,  we'd 
love  to  finally  see  a  Lewis  Carroll 
in  college  football  or  the  NFL  one 
day! 


as 

INTERNET  ^TECHNOLOGY 

Here's  your  occasional  reminder 
that  the  LCSNA  has  various  social 
media  connections.  In  addition 
to  the  Far-Flung  blog  at  lewis 
carroll.org,  we  have  a  twitter  feed 
©AliceAmerica  (a  good  way  to 
receive  reminders  about  the  blog 
posts  or  text  us  compromising 
images  of  your  Carroll  obsession) 
and  an  active  Facebook  group. 
Friend  or  unfriend  us!  Re-tweet 
us!  Leave  us  comments!  Join  the 
online  discussions! 

We  were  lucky  enough  to  have 
Emily  R.  Aguilo-Perez,  M.A.E.E., 
of  the  University  of  Puerto  Rico- 
Mayagiiez  Campus  (and  speaker 
at  the  LCSNA's  Fall  2011  meet- 
ing), write  a  guest  post  on  our 
blog,  a  review  of  a  review  of  the 
fine  1987  film  The  Care  Bears  Ad- 
ventures in  Wonderland.  The  Nos- 
talgia Critic's  entertaining  video 
review  from  ThatGuyWithThe- 
Glasses.com  was  in  turn  entertain- 
ingly reviewed  by  Aguilo-Perez. 
The  original  movie,  which  has 
never  been  re-released  on  DVD, 
can  be  found  quasi-legally  on 
YouTube.  "WARNING  ...  THERE 
IS  A  RAPPING  PSYCHEDELIC 
CHESHIRE  CAT!" 

Adriana  Peliano  keeps  up  at  least 
six  impossible  blogs  before  break- 


56 


fast,  and  now  the  Sociedade  Lewis 
Carroll  de  Brasil  has  a  new  website 
with  lots  of  flashiness  and  Flash. 
Check  out  www.lewiscarrollbrasil. 
com.br — available  in  either  English 
or  Portuguese. 

Who  would  buy  the  domain  name 
www.twasbrilligandtheslithytoves 
didgyreandgimbleinthewabe.com? 
Surely  not  a  typesetter?  Wrong! 
When  the  circumlocutory  online 
location  was  offered  in  an  eBay 
auction,  the  successful  bidder  was 
Michael  Everson,  publisher  of 
many  Alice  translations,  linguist, 
and  typesetter.  The  link  now  redi- 
rects to  the  Evertype  website. 

AA/Whas  been  translated  into  over 
a  hundred  languages,  but  sadly 
most  of  these  translations  are 
meant  for  human  beings.  WON- 
DER-TONIC.com  has  rectified  this; 
as  part  of  their  Books2Barcodes 
project,  they  have  translated  Alice 
into  2D  QR  code.  In  fewer  than 
200  convenient  installments,  smart- 
phones  with  barcode-reading  apps 
can  easily  convert  this  back  into 
Carroll's  original. 

The  blog  Alice's  Illustrated  Adven- 
tures in  Wonderland,  Illustrated  by 
Almost  Everybody,  is  a  great  ex- 
ample of  one  job  done  well.  Its 
anonymous  creator  set  out  the 
twelve  chapters  of  AATW'xn  twelve 
posts  and  then  interspersed  the 
text  with  illustrations  by,  well,  ev- 
erybody (almost):  Tenniel,  Dalf, 
Rackham,  Peter  Weevers,  Maggie 
Taylor,  and  many  more,  even  Lewis 
Carroll.  Then  he  or  she  stopped. 
That's  it.  There's  nothing  else  on 
the  blog. 

In  addition  to  being  a  well-known 
poem,  The  Hunting  of the  Snark  is 
also  an  online  game  in  which  play- 
ers seek  hidden  objects  in  quirky 
illustrations  inspired  by  the  ex- 
ploits of  a  Baker,  a  Beaver,  and  a 
Banker.  The  game  was  created  by 
Long  Leaf's  Friends — the  solo 
project  of  a  Polish  illustrator  called 
Navatika. 


When  the  British  Library  offered 
an  iPod/iPad/iPhone  download  of 
the  original  manuscript  of  Alice's 
Adventures  under  Ground,  the  book 
was  downloaded  over  25,000  times 
in  two  weeks!  Part  of  a  series  called 
eBook  Treasures,  the  manuscript  is 
presented  in  a  virtual  "3D"  envi- 
ronment in  which  you  can  turn 
pages,  zoom  in,  and  see  everything 
up  to  and  including  original  coffee 
stains  in  crystal-clear  detail.  Under 
Ground  and  a  growing  number  of 
other  precious  manuscripts  are 
yours,  in  electronic  form,  for 
around  $10  each,  from  ebooktrea 
sures.org. 

Saliq  Ali  has  created  a  handy  app 
for  the  casual  reading  of  20  letters 
and  acrostics  of  Lewis  Carroll  at 
redscarfvestpink.appspot.com. 

The  founder  of  Project  Gutenberg, 
Michael  Stern  Hart,  passed  away 
on  September  6  this  year.  After 
Hart  heard  of  children  "eagerly 
reading  Alice  in  Wonderland  on  the 
computer,"  it  was  one  of  the  very 
first  books  he  digitalized  for  the 
project  (AX  71:  27).  Free,  of 
course,  it  is  currently  the  sixth 
most  popular  download  on  the 
site,  downloaded  almost  12,000 
times  in  a  recent  one-month  pe- 
riod. 


JWt 


MOVIES  (^TELEVISION 

The  website  indiegogo.com  is 
a  good  place  to  raise  money 
for  an  independent  art  project. 
Some  filmmakers  in  San  Fran- 
cisco— Chandra  Reyes  (Writer/ 
Director),  Laura  Chenault  (Direc- 
tor of  Photography) ,  andjorna 
Tolosa-Chung  (Co-Producer) — are 
campaigning  there  for  a  future 
Carroll-derived  indie  movie,  Be- 
hind Shattered  Glass.  "The  film  is 
about  a  young  woman  who,  with 
the  sudden  loss  of  her  love,  takes 
sanctuary  in  a  new  strange  world," 
writes  Reyes.  "I  believe  that  every 
filmmaker  that  grew  up  reading  or 
watching  Lewis  Carroll's  fairy  tale 
has  an  Alice  in  Wonderland  story 
within  them  that  needs  to  be  told." 


They're  less  than  halfway  to  their 
goal  of  raising  $2,000,  and  there 
are  perks  to  donating,  such  as 
movie  posters,  copies  of  the  film, 
and,  for  high  rollers,  an  illus- 
trated copy  of  the  script. 

There's  a  strange  new  film/art 
project  from  Japan  whose  title  is 
translated  as  Arisu  in  the  Under- 
world: The  Dark  Mdrchen  Show. 
According  to  Adriana  Peliano, 
"Arisu's  Adventures  in  Wonder- 
land from  Lewis  Carroll  is  en- 
tirely transformed  into  a  Japa- 
nese Gothic  Lolita  wonderland. 
. . .  For  a  start,  the  lead  is  played 
by  a  man.  The  viewer  can  deter- 
mine whether  it  is  kitsch,  camp, 
or  cult."  We're  not  sure  what 
exactly  that  means,  but  the  art 
and  imagery  from  the  film  look 
amazing,  and  their  chaotic  web- 
site www.rose-alice.net  is  full  of 
wonders.  It's  for  sale  as  an  elabo- 
rate "art  album  +  DVD." 

In  the  wake  of  their  mediocre 
Alice  miniseries,  Syfy  (formerly 
the  Sci-Fi  Channel)  aired  a 
made-for-tv  movie  Jabberwock  on 
September  10.  Steven  R.  Monroe 
directs  "the  story  of  a  young 
squire  (Michael  Worth)  who, 
alongside  his  brother  (Tahmoh 
Penikett),  must  become  a  war- 
rior to  save  his  people  and  the 
woman  he  loves  (Kacey  Barn- 
field)  after  a  horrific  beast  is 
unleashed  on  the  village."  The 
campy  CGI  monster  makes  us 
nostalgic  for  the  days  of  Clash  of 
the  Titans. 


& 

MUSIC 

Naxos  has  released  composer 
Maurice  Saylor's  "magnum  opus," 
The  Hunting  of  the  Snark:  An  Agony 
in  Eight  Fits,  on  CD  and  wherever 
all  fine  digital  music  files  can  be 
downloaded.  You  can  hear  the 
excellent  Cantate  Singers  toss 
lines  from  Carroll's  poem  around 
in  a  choral  whirlwind,  accompa- 
nied by  Saylor's  Snark  Pit-Band. 
The  other  tracks  on  the  album, 
music  Saylor  wrote  for  silent 


57 


films,  played  by  The  Snark  Ensem- 
ble, are  also  really  fun. 

The  great  country  revival  duo  Gil- 
lian Welch  and  Dave  Rawlings  have 
released  their  first  album  in  almost 
a  decade,  The  Harrow  &  the  Harvest. 
(It's  really  good.)  They  went  on 
Fresh  Airxriih  Terry  Gross  to  plug  it, 
and  at  the  end  of  the  show,  Gross 
asked  them  to  play  a  cover,  "to 
surprise  us  with  a  song  that  we 
might  not  think  that  they  like." 
They  chose  Jefferson  Airplane's 
"White  Rabbit,"  and  it's  a  pretty 
damned  beautiful  cover  of  that 
song.  Starting  at  41  minutes  into 
the  show,  Welch  explains  why  they 
chose  that  song,  and  then  their 
version  of  it  gets  cut  off  for  the 
credits.  However,  naturally,  they're 
plugging  it  as  a  special  single  on 
iTunes,  for  $1.29.  Your  far-flung 
correspondents  also  got  to  see 
Welch  and  Rawlings  perform  it  at 
San  Francisco's  Hardly  Strictly 
Bluegrass  Festival  this  October. 
Remember  what  the  dormouse 
said.  .  .  .  "'That  I  can't  remember,' 
said  the  Hatter." 

An  entirely  synthesized  and  ani- 
mated "Vocaloid"  musical  called 
Alice  in  Musicland  has  proved  very 
popular  online  but  may  take  a  bit 
of  explaining  here.  The  part  of 
Alice  (and  possibly  all  the  other 
parts  as  well — the  technology  is  a 
little  mysterious  to  your  faithful 
correspondents)  was  "sung"  by 
Hatsune  Miku,  a  singing  synthe- 
sizer application  that  was  created 
using  vocal  samples  from  Japanese 
actress  Saki  Fujita.  Hatsune  Miku, 
one  of  many  singing  personas 
created  using  the  Vocaloid  soft- 
ware, has  apparently  become  a 
virtual  idol:  Her  album  topped  a 
Japanese  weekly  album  chart,  and 
she  even  performed  "live"  in  Tokyo 
last  year.  The  12-minute  musical  is 
heartfelt,  moving,  and  very  high- 
pitched. 


PERFORMING  ARTS 

Michael  Haverty,  of  Atlanta's  Cen- 
ter for  Puppetry  Arts,  staged  an 
impressive  "avant-garde  puppetry- 
based  show"  called  The  Colour  of 
Her  Dreams  in  April  and  May  201 1 
at  7  Stages  Theatre  Mainstage. 
The  lovingly  crafted  show  was  a 
more  personal  project  than  usual 
for  the  director.  Haverty 's  mother, 
Keturah  Curbow,  was  an  artist  who 
suffered  from  bipolar  disorder 
and  died  when  he  was  a  teenager, 
but  she  left  behind  hundreds  of 
Alice-inspired  paintings,  sketches, 
and  notebooks.  "My  mother  used 
Alice  as  an  avatar  to  work  through 
her  challenges.  In  a  way,  she  became 
Alice."  The  play  brings  her  imag- 
ery to  life,  including  the  largest 
dormouse  puppet  we've  ever  seen. 
Haverty  also  published  an  accom- 
panying book  of  Curbow's  art,  and 
there  are  images  and  videos  of  the 
project  at  havertymarionettes.org. 

It  was  a  bumper  year  for  new  Lewis 
Carroll-inspired  theatre  at  the 
Edinburgh  Fringe  festival  in  Scot- 
land. Nine  productions  (at  least) 
imagined,  re-imagined,  or  strug- 
gled to  imagine  Carroll's  life  and 
works.  Plays  included  Alicia  en  La 
Loteria,  which  explored  notions  of 
cultural  acceptance  and  belonging 
with  a  Hispanic  Alice;  Waiting  for 
Alice,  which  portrayed  an  unfin- 
ished Wonderland  heavily  in- 
debted to  Samuel  Beckett;  and 
Alice's  Wonderland,  a  new  "dark 
take"  on  the  story,  but  one  acted  by 
children.  The  best  reviews  went  to 
The  Carroll  Myth,  performed  by 
Schmuck's  Theatre  Company — 
which  imagined  the  troubled  rela- 
tionship between  Carroll  and  the 
Liddels  that  may  have  led  to  the 
destruction  of  sections  of  Carroll's 
diary — and  Belt  Up  Theatre's  Out- 
land,  inspired  by  Sylvie  and  Bruno 
(unusually),  which  suggested  that 
epileptic  fits  governed  Carroll's 
creative  life.  More  details  of  the 
productions  and  links  to  reviews 
can  found  at  www.edfringe.com. 


A  Lewis  Carroll-inspired  theater 
installation,  with  interactive  as- 
pects and  impressive  scope,  hap- 
pened in  different  parks  around 
Seattle  in  July  and  August.  WON- 
DERLAND: Alice  Adventures  is  part 
of  4Culture's  Site  Specific  Perfor- 
mance Network.  "A  free  theatri- 
cal park  escapade,  WONDER- 
LAND is  inspired  by  and  adapted 
from  Charles  Dodgson  (Lewis 
Carroll)  's  Alice  stories,  as  well  as 
Dodgson 's  wordplay,  math  games 
and  puzzles.  An  all-ages  adven- 
ture, theater  and  visual  arts 
weave  whimsically  together 
within  a  parkland,  playing  with 
the  creative  perspectives  of  imag- 
inations." 

The  shocking  theft  of  a  statue  of 
Lewis  Carroll  from  a  small  UK 
town  has  inspired  a  play  called 
Alice  in  Thunderland.  In  an  added 
twist,  one  of  the  writers  previously 
appeared  as  a  character  in  Brian 
Talbot's  graphic  novel  Alice  in 
Sunderland.  The  play,  described 
by  its  writers  as  "low-brow,"  inter- 
weaves characters  from  Alice's 
adventures  with  a  fictionalized 
account  of  the  crime.  There  was  a 
reading  of  the  play  at  Sunder- 
land's Royalty  Theatre  in  June. 

June  1-5  at  the  Soho  Playhouse, 
NY,  saw  Alice  au  pays  des  Merveilles 
performed  by  The  Beautiful  Soup 
Theater  Collective.  In  the  play, 
"loosely  inspired  by  Chagall's 
painting  Paris  Through  the  Windoiu, 
a  young  American  Alice  follows  a 
mime  from  a  suburban  park  into 
an  elevator  and  finds  herself  in  a 
strange  new  world. 

Congratulations  to  Lookingglass 
Theatre  in  Chicago  for  winning 
the  201 1  Tony  for  best  regional 
theater.  Their  "signature  play"  is 
Lookingglass  Alice  by  founding 
member  David  Catlin,  which 
inaugurated  the  company  in 
1988.  Chicago  theaters  have  won 
a  record  five  Tonies  for  best  re- 
gional theater. 


58 


X 

THINGS 

Carroll,  together  with  Ernest 
Hemingway,  William  Shakespeare, 
and  others,  has  been  honored  by 
reproduction  in  paper  doll  form. 
Dover  Publications'  Literary  Greats 
Paper  Dolls  features  35  paper  dolls 
of  famous  authors  along  with  cos- 
tumes inspired  by  each  author's 
own  creations  ($9.99).  Want  to 
dress  up  Lewis  Carroll  as  the  White 
Rabbit?  Or  Alice?  You  can. 

She  magazine  posted  an  online 
round-up  of  Wonderland-inspired 
home  furnishings  on  August  23. 
New  to  us  were  the  tea  cup  chande- 
lier ($196  from  Walmart)  and  the 
Cheshire  Cat  tapestry  wall  hanging 
($109  from  Medieval  Wall  Tapes- 
try). Curvy  bookcases  (they  look 
drunk)  and  plastic  thrones  were 
also  recommended  for  giving  your 
house  that  Wonderland  vibe.  No- 
table by  its  absence  was  the  giant 
teacup  stool  sold  in  four  loud  col- 
ors by  UK  retailer  Mocha  ($255). 


Wearing  a  label  around  your  neck 
that  says  "Eat  Me"  is  not  OK,  unless 
of  course  it  is  attached  to  a  tiny 
stoppered  bottle  full  of  miniature 
treats.  This  unusual  necklace  is 
listed  as  "Necklace  in  Wonderland" 
on  ModCloth.com  for  $24.99. 

The  New  Holland  Brewing  Com- 
pany, from  Holland,  MI,  is  making 
a  Mad  Hatter  India  Pale  Ale 
(5.3%)  and  a  much  madder  Impe- 
rial Mad  Hatter  Imperial  Pale  Ale 
(9.4%).  The  non-Imperial  Hatter  is 
described  as  "dry-hopped  for  a 
distinctive,  floral  hop  aroma;  subtly 
balanced  with  delicious  malt 
notes."  Recommended  to  un-teeto- 
tallers  everywhere. 

"Wonderland  Keys,"  a  white  silk 
scarf  from  Tiffany's  &  Co,  is 
printed  with  a  shower  of  vintage 
keys  in  either  black  and  white  or 
gold  and  blue.  At  $275  it  is  one  of 
the  most  affordable  accessories  on 
their  website. 

Fishs  Eddy's  range  of  dinnerware 
featuring  Tenniel  illustrations  may 
be  on  the  wane.  Marked-down 
items  include  plates,  cereal  bowls, 
and  salt  and  pepper  shakers,  and  it 
is  not  clear  that  the  lines  will  be 
restocked. 


The  Story  Book  Tea  Company  was 
created  "to  help  engage  children 
with  classic  literature  through  the 
sacred  ritual  of  afternoon  tea."  So 
far  their  merchandise  consists  of 
the  mysteriously  titled  "Alice's 
Pawfect  Tea-Party  Kit,"  a  book- 
shaped  box  containing  tea  time 
supplies,  chapter  seven  of  AATW 
in  a  little  booklet,  and  a  narrated 
tea  party  guide  on  CD  ($24.99, 
refills  of  edibles  available  sepa- 
rately). 

Each  Halloween  reliably  brings 
ever  weirder  interpretations  of 
Alice  and  friends,  but  costume 
retailer  Spirit  has  really  gone  over 
the  edge  this  time:  Dress  your 
darling  child  as  "Mad  Hatter  Mr. 
Hyde,"  and  cackle  with  delight  as 
your  baffled  neighbors  hand  out 
candy  to  a  snarling  gargoyle  in  a 
gigantic  top  hat. 


59